


The Hands That Hold The Crown

by Shiniko1898



Series: A Broken Crown Still Shines [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:13:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 72
Words: 52,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26367745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiniko1898/pseuds/Shiniko1898
Summary: Outtakes and alternate points of views from You’ve got the Crown (don’t give it up) and Chin up (Or the Crown Falls)
Series: A Broken Crown Still Shines [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1920322
Comments: 1107
Kudos: 690





	1. Two ANBU have a parent teacher Conference

“Your daughter is a little monster.”

Kakashi gets straight to the point when he finds Satoshi sitting at the bar, drinking sake. He glares at the man that’s responsible for making the little feral child he now has to teach.

He’s always found it odd that one of the most brutal Anbu operatives to ever exist was a family man. Always found it strange that the man behind the wolf mask had a life waiting for him after the mission was over, had a daughter who looked at him like he hung the moon and stars in the sky. Found it stranger still, that the brutal, cold man hadn’t destroyed the tiny girl. Kakashi envies the man for that. Everything he had ever dared touch had been destroyed.

Kakashi isn’t sure what he did to deserve a team with Minato’s idiot son, the clearly traumatized last Uchiha, and a girl that was born to the cruelest Anbu operative Konoha has ever produced and trained by multiple other Anbu. And Shikaku apparently. That plan to steal his Icha Icha and bait him into a trap had all the hallmarks of a drunk shikaku strategy. He hasn’t even had them a full day and he’s already wishing he’d never left Anbu.

Satoshi grins slow and sly. Those teeth of his have always made his smiles unsettling, even without witnessing the violence that often followed them, so of course his little feral child would have them too. Kakashi was in Anbu with Satoshi. He’s seen the man rip throats out with those teeth, he’s going to end up with a kunoichi who gnaws on people’s necks. All because this man had to procreate.

“Did she pass your little bell test?”

“Of course she passed. She tried her level best to kill me in the process though. Stole my book too, nearly blew it and herself up trying to end me.”

He has to give the girl points for determination and the clear willingness to fight dirty. Sometimes shinobi start out with a weird thing about fighting fairly or with honor. They aren’t samurai, though. There’s no room for those things on a mission.

“Oh do tell me she managed to damage your book beyond recognition. I need to get her a reward if so.”

Satoshi’s eyes are filled with mirth as he finishes the sake and pours himself another glass.

“It survived, barely. She’s okay too. If you’re worried.”

Kakashi isn’t sure if Satoshi heard him when he said she nearly blew herself up too.

“Oh, if she wasn’t okay, I know you wouldn’t be making small talk with me.” The smile turns into a warning snarl for just a moment and Satoshi leaks killing intent before abruptly returning to his friendly, nice mask. Message received.

“Maa maa of course! She’s a mean one you know. Normally when I say they need to try to kill me, they don’t actually take it seriously.”

“Katsumi’s always tried her best. You gave her permission to do whatever she had to do. Don’t be surprised when she does exactly that. How’d she manage to nearly blow you up though? She’s not a trap specialist.”

“Apparently Naruto is.”

Satoshi throws his head back and laughs like that’s the funniest joke he’s ever heard.

“That explains it. They were sitting on my floor last night, plotting like they were planning to overthrow the Hokage. I was getting worried really.”

“It’s not funny. I don’t know how you raised that girl but she’s not normal.”

“She’s an Ishihara, she is exactly how every Ishihara before her was. She’s practically a textbook example. Besides you can thank her babysitters for her more... overzealous behaviors. Anko, Gai and Genma were her primary babysitters while I was on missions. Then she practically moved in with shikaku’s family when she went to the academy and I took longer missions.” Satoshi shrugs, clearly not concerned that his daughter is almost guaranteed to be slated for Anbu with that line up responsible for training her. Of course, Satoshi thrives there, maybe he thinks little, serious, feral Katsumi will too.

Kakashi privately agrees, but he’s her sensei now and he refuses to watch any of his students disappear into that shadowy, blood soaked organization if he can stop it. Katsumi is the smallest genin he’s ever seen that didn’t graduate early. The idea of her wearing one of the painted masks, well, that doesn’t sit well with him at all.

Kakashi read her file, though. Knows without a doubt, if this had been wartime or the Itachi situation hadn’t happened, she would have been pushed through the academy as fast as possible. He’s almost certain Satoshi knows it too. Sasuke may be the one hailed has a prodigy, but Katsumi is the one that actually is. And she doesn’t even notice it. Thinks she’s perfectly normal for a freshly minted genin. Thinks learning to suppress her chakra before she’s eight is normal, thinks being able to come up with Shikaku worthy plans is normal. Kakashi wonders how that’s possible.

“Well... I’ll be sure to impart some lessons in restraint onto her, since they were clearly neglected.”

Satoshi raises the cup in a mocking toast.

“Good luck, Hatake.”

That’s not foreboding at all.


	2. A Shifting of priorities

Ishihara Satoshi misses his daughter’s birth. Not by much, only a few minutes really. He’d rushed through the mission the moment he got word of Hana’s water breaking. Not his most professional, but he thinks it can be forgiven this once. He had run through the tree branches like the shinigami was after him. Knowing if he didn’t make it in time Hana may actually hospitalize him. 

He shows up to the hospital still covered in dirt and blood, barely takes the time to remove his mask and stash it in a storage scroll and henge so his ANBU uniform doesn’t give him away. 

A baby’s wailing greets him when he gets to Hana’s room. Satoshi feels like he’s been electrocuted. Like he’s taken a raiton jutsu straight to the heart. He hasn’t even met the child the cries are emanating from, doesn’t even know if it’s a boy or girl, and he already knows he’d commit treason for it.Would cheerfully murder the Hokage for it. 

He has to take a deep breath to settle himself before he slips into the room. He barely pays the medic cleaning up the room any attention. 

Hana is laying in the hospital bed, for once content to stay where she is. He’s certain that’s a first. His wild hearted wife despises hospitals. Most shinobi do. 

She’s sweaty and her short hair is a mess and she’s pale from pain and exertion and Satoshi thinks she’s the most stunning woman in the world. She’s holding their child against her chest and cooing down at the tiny thing as it screams it’s objection to being born to the world. He can just make out a swatch of dark dark hair over the little yellow blanket it’s wrapped in. 

Satoshi feels like he’s frozen in place. He’s survived war, been on more missions that should have killed him than most and survived by the skin of his teeth, he’s faced off with some of the worst people and seen the worst things this world has to offer, and it’s this that stops him in his tracks. His wife and the tiny, helpless thing in her arms. 

“Well, Satoshi? Come meet your daughter.” His wife’s voice is sweet and exhausted and teasing. It’s also filled with more joy than he’s ever heard from her before. 

He has a daughter. A girl. His little one is a little Kunoichi. Or will be one day. The thought of that tiny bundle ever becoming a shinobi fills him with fear. Makes him want to hide her away from the world. 

Soundlessly, he approaches his tiny family and takes a seat by hana’s side. 

“I’m sorry I’m late, wife, I came back as soon as I got the news.”

“I’ll be angry at you later, for now, say hello to our little girl. She has a lot to say, I think.”

Satoshi smiles at that, the baby certainly seems to have both lungs functioning at full capacity. 

Hana adjusts her hold on the baby so he can get a better look. She’s much smaller than he thought. Dark hair, and he thinks it’s his black instead of Hana’s brown, a scrunched up red face, and eyes that were the foggy blue all new babies have. Satoshi thinks this child must be the most beautiful thing he’s ever laid eyes on. 

“Would you like to hold her?” Hana’s voice is teasing, because she knows he does. She always knows. That’s just how Hana is. 

He takes her carefully, holding her like she’s the most fragile, priceless thing that has ever existed. She’s still crying but it’s muted, slowly the little thing is calming down and coming to terms with her new existence. 

She feels so little in his arms. He barely needs both arms to hold her properly. She seems to weigh practically nothing but when he voices this, Hana just laughs and tells him she’s a perfectly healthy size. 

“Hello, little one, I’m your Tou-san. I’m sorry I wasn’t here earlier, but I’m here now and I promise I won’t let anything happen to you.” 

It’s not really a promise. More a statement of fact. Satoshi has done terrible things in his life, but he is determined to do right by this child. He will see her grow up, see her thrive and enjoy the innocence of childhood for as long as she can, he refuses to be the thing that teaches this child the world’s cruelty. 

“I finally thought of a name.” Hana’s voice breaks him out of his thoughts. They’d struggled and argued for months over what names to choose. Hadn’t been able to find one that satisfied either of them. 

Right now, Satoshi thinks he would be happy with any name Hana chooses. She gave him the tiny, wonderful creature in his arms, she can name her anything in the world and he’ll be content. 

“And what name is that?” Satoshi can’t pull his gaze away from the child. And when a drop of water lands on the baby’s cheek, he realizes he’s crying. It’s strange, he doesn’t remember the last time he cried for anything. 

“Katsumi. With the Kanji’s for victory and beauty. How does that sound to you?”

Katsumi. Victorious beauty. He rolls the name around in his head, staring at the baby. 

“Katsumi. It sounds perfect.”


	3. In Which Shikaku Contemplates Child Stealing

Shikaku doesn’t know how it happened. Well he does, but it’s still a bit of a mystery. One minute he has one son. Lazy, unmotivated and so, so intelligent. One he loves and is proud of and he sees the future in every breath the boy takes. 

The next, he apparently has a daughter too. Tiny and wide eyed and already displaying the obsessive need for constant useful motion that takes most shinobi years to develop. 

He’s not sure what to make of it when his son brings the girl home with him on the first day of the academy. He knows though, exactly who she belongs to when she flashes Shikamaru a beaming smile across the shogi board. Tiny, pointed teeth like a puppy’s are a pretty good indication.From the way Shikamaru watches her as she tries to decide on a move, he knows this won’t be a one time thing. Knows he’s going to have to live with Ishihara’s spawn spending time in his house for a long time to come. 

He has the sinking feeling that at some point in the future their guest room will be seeing use. Logically, he knows it’s not his responsibility to pick up the slack when Ishihara leaves on a months long mission. Logically, he knows plenty of shinobi children are left alone once they start at the academy while both parents (if they have both) go on missions. Logically he knows he wouldn’t be doing anything unusual if he left her to her own devices. 

So he does. For five months, he leaves her to fend for herself. Doesn’t say a word as she spends more and more time at his house, doing homework beside Shikamaru, helping Yoshino in the kitchen, playing shoji and watching the deer from a safe, nervous distance. Stays silent until the sight of the girl’s obvious exhaustion is a sight he comes to hate. He’s heard from Shikamaru how much the child trains. How willing she is to work herself to the bone. Adding the stress of taking care of herself for the first time is clearly becoming detrimental to her health. 

Shikamaru’s pointed questions and offhand comments about the situation and Yoshino’s growing motherly concern are what ultimately makes up his mind for him. 

When he offers to let her stay, he can see the confusion, can see her trying to work out his motives. Can see it on her face that she thinks his offer is too little too late. Shikaku half expects her to refuse. Ishihara pride is weird like that. 

When Shikamaru butts in, he can tell she will agree. She doesn’t seem able to tell his son no, Clings to him like moss to a rock, but not in the fangirlish way little girls with a crush do. No, it’s the steadiness of a sure, loyal friend that colors her relationship with his son. Shikaku knows it goes both ways. 

The girl slips easily into the household’s routine, like she’d been there for years. He finds her infinitely more preferable to her standoffish, mercurial father. The man is a good shinobi, a terror on the field, but he isn’t someone Shikaku would want to go out for drinks with. Hasn’t been since the day his wife died. 

His daughter however, has all her father’s drive and talent but he can’t see any of his nature in her. Oh, she’s clearly lacking in social skills, too blunt, misses the social queues that would tell her she shouldn’t do or say something, tends to growl like a wild animal when she’s frustrated, but it’s nothing overwhelming or unnerving. 

By the time Ishihara returns, months late, Shikaku isn’t exactly happy to give the girl back. He’d come to think of her as his daughter and he dreads the day Ishihara finally messes up enough to break the little thing. He makes sure to keep the guest room ready, just in case it’s needed again. 


	4. A Duality

The alarms are screaming and as Satoshi puts his mask on and becomes Wolf, he knows whatever happened is going to be terrible. 

Wolf arrives to the Uchiha compound with Hound and Lynx and Cat. Wolf isn’t phased by the sight of blood. Even if there’s enough blood coating the stones to make a river of it. Blood and bile and tears. The place reeks of horror. Reeks like Satoshi’s earliest memories of a village not his own (no longer his own) do. 

Death and terror and pure unadulterated violence. Wolf knows these things intimately. Wolf doesn’t flinch when he finds the first body. Doesn’t feel anything when he sees it’s a child younger than Satoshi’s daughter. It’s not a person anymore. Just a body. Nothing worth feeling anything over. Of course, Wolf doesn’t feel much of anything. Not fear, not disgust, not rage, nothing. 

Wolf isn’t normally sent out for rescue and recovery missions. Not unless Wolf is needed to carve through the soon to be bodies like they’re nothing to get to his target. Even then, others are often chosen before Wolf if at all feasible. 

This is different though. This is home. This is Wolf’s territory and Wolf is expected to be here looking for the living. Wolf’s ears are as sharp as his teeth, as sharp as his blades and Wolf already knows there’s no heartbeats in any of the bodies on the street. 

Wolf checks house after house. More bodies. Men and women, dead. The elderly, dead. Shinobi, dead. Civilians, dead. Babies in their cradles, dead. 

Wolf is unmoved by all the carnage. Wolf has orders to find survivors. Wolf has never failed an order before. Wolf refuses to fail now. 

It’s Cat who finds the sole survivor. Wolf doesn’t care much about who the survivor is. Doesn’t care if they are going to live or die later. A survivor has been found and Wolf is satisfied. 

It’s a child. Wolf knows this child is likely one of Satoshi’s daughter’s classmates. The boy is passed out in a pool of his own drool and vomit, but entirely uninjured. Wolf can see the boy’s parents dead nearby. 

When the boy is delivered to the hospital, Wolf gets new orders: move the bodies. Wolf doesn’t care that this isn’t what his normal job is. Wolf exists to follow orders. 

Body scroll after body scroll. Three-hundred and sixty-four dead. One new missing nin and a traumatized boy are the only ones left to tell the story. Wolf knows whatever happened here will be a shit show of a story. Wolf doesn’t care. Someone else will deal with that mess. 

It’s exactly nine hours and twenty-three minutes later when Wolf is relieved of duty. 

It’s Satoshi that returns to his daughter, not Wolf. And Satoshi does care. Satoshi is sickened by the sight of corpses littering the streets, horrified by seeing children his daughter’s age murdered. Wants to throw up when he pictures the dead infants. 

His home is dark and for a moment he expects to see his own daughter drowning in a pool of blood on the floor. She’s not though. He can hear her little hummingbird heartbeat coming from his closet. She’s terrified, her quick, shallow breaths tell him that much. 

Satoshi flicks on the light In his room and the heartbeat speeds up even more. He hardly notices when he drops Wolf by the bed. Satoshi is exhausted and horrified and all he cares about is seeing his daughter is unharmed. 

Satoshi can recognize a bloodline purge. He was barely old enough to remember it when Chigiri purged his and sent his mother fleeing to the Forests for safety, but the memory has never faded. This was a terrible reminder that safety doesn’t exist anywhere. 

He has to coax little Katsumi out. She looks as wrecked as he feels. Her pupils are blown wide and she’s shaking so hard he’s worried she’s going to go into shock. He’s never seen his little girl so terrified. He hates it that she’s experiencing this fear so young. Experiencing it at all.

He doesn’t even hesitate to pick her up when she looks up at him with wide pleading eyes and raises her arms. Satoshi presses his face into her hair and breathes in the only scent that matters to him. It’s sour with fear but it’s still smells like flowers with a hint of metal. It takes everything he has not to take her and run. This isn’t Kiri. That wasn’t the clan that he barely remembers. She’s in no danger here. Satoshi and Wolf are in agreement on one thing. 

This child will never be in danger in her own village. Not while they breathe. 


	5. Fucking Kiri Brat

It’s been twenty-hours since the fucking mess that was the fight with hatake. Fucking copy nin. Zabuza is pissed. This was suppose to be a simple contract. Kill an old man, get paid a stupid amount of Money. Move on. Simple. Easy. No stress. 

Then fucking Hatake had to show up. With three stupid fucking brats in tow. Zabuza had barely noticed them at first. He recognizes what’s worth paying attention to and what isn’t. Three scrawny baby ninja aren’t. Not when the fucking Copy cat ninja is staring you down. 

Oh he’d noticed the boys easy enough. The last uchiha and a brat that looks like the yellow flash reborn are pretty fucking hard not to notice. The girl hadn’t been interesting enough to even glance over until she snarled at him. 

And oh did that brat become interesting. Those teeth were fucking nightmare fuel in Kiri. He had never met an Ishihara, they’d been wiped out before his time, but damned if he couldn’t recognize one. Kiri mothers still used that fucking terror of a clan to scare their children into behaving. 

What a mindfuck it was to see a tiny living one hiding behind the copy cat nin. Wearing a Konoha hitai-ate. Zabuza feels his lip curl back in distaste thinking about it again. 

That little brat is a Kiri kid. He could see it clear as day on her. All stormy rage and violent, barely concealed bloodlust. It’s practically sacrilege that the brat fights for Konoha. That soft hearted village is gong to fucking ruin her. Going to rip those teeth right out of her head and make her just as soft as the rest of them. 

It’s a fucking shame. Brat didn’t even know what she was. He could read the confusion on her when he said it. Could see her not understanding. Damn fucking shame. 

He’d seen the way the brat eyed Kubikiribōchō. Saw the way her eyes tracked it. Brat looked like she’d happily gnaw his arms off to have it. Fucking unnerving watching an Ishihara look at him like he was standing in the way of their prey. Fucking hell, there’s a god damn reason they were called Sea wolves, and those fucking teeth were only part of it. 

Still. The fucking kid is Kiri. She should have some Kiri education. Zabuza supposes he’s as good a teacher as any.

Damn shame he didn’t find her first. Haku would have probably liked having another brat around. 


	6. In which Katsumi officially adopts Naruto

Naruto isn’t sure what to expect when Katsumi takes him to her home. He almost refuses, almost fights her on it, doesn’t want to see the hate he’s certain will be in her father’s eyes if he sees him with her. He doesn’t though. When Katsumi makes up her mind nothing can dissuade her and Naruto knows she’d drag him there by force if she had too. 

He’s not sure what he expected her home to be like. A house maybe, with a place dojo or something for her to train in. Something big and impressive, Katsumi seems like that’s the kind of home she would have. What he sees instead is an apartment on the edge of the village. Not huge but still so much bigger than his. It’s clean and mostly bare of decorations but Naruto loves it. 

For a moment he forgets his nervousness and runs to look at everything. He can feel Katsumi’s eyes on him as he does but she doesn’t say anything. He figures that’s an invitation to look around. He finds the shogi board first. He’s never played it, doesn’t have the first idea of how, but he likes looking at it. The bloodstains on it surprise him, and he wonders if Katsumi hurt herself somehow playing with it. He’s seen her scars from training with her sword, he wonders if something similar happened at some point playing this. When she tells him it came that way it eases his worry. 

The Katana over her bed is awesome. Naruto has never held one before and he’s completely fascinated by it. It looks brand new and he wants to try it but Katsumi is super weird about her swords. He figures she’d get twitchy if he starts waving it around. 

It’s the fridge that really catches his eye. Makes something in his chest ache in want. There’s pictures of Katsumi hung on it. Baby pictures. Pictures of a tiny chubby cheeked toddler with giant green eyes. A picture of her hold her sword clearly straining under the weight of it. Pictures of her eating mochi. There’s drawings hung up too and graded homework papers. It’s amazing and almost overwhelming to see how much her tou-San must care about her to do this. 

Naruto forces down the feeling of jealously curling in his gut. He wonders if his own parents, whoever they were, would have done this for him.

Katsumi’s father watches them plan for their survival test when he arrives, Naruto thinks he looks awesome. Looks like a real shinobi with the scarred face and swords strapped to his back. And wow his teeth are even sharper than Katsumi’s. He can’t read the man’s face either. Can’t tell if he wants him gone or not. Can’t tell from his voice if he hates him too. It sets Naruto on edge not being able to tell. 

When the man gives him food along with Katsumi, Naruto thinks that means the man doesn’t hate him. He hopes that’s what he means. Naruto doesn’t want to ask Katsumi though. She’d probably get mad if she thought he didn’t trust her father. She practically worships the man, he knows. 

When Katsumi has him sleep on the couch, Naruto can’t help but grin in excitement. He’s never had a sleep over before. Never been let into another person’s house. It’s amazing to him that Katsumi would let him stay the night. Much less give him a blanket and one of her own pillows to use. Naruto expects her father to draw the line there, to say something. To finally drop the nice, but kinda indifferent act. He doesn’t though just shrugs and let’s it happen. 

Naruto has no idea how he has a friend like Katsumi but he’s never going to mess this up. Believe it. 


	7. A Father’s Mistake

Satoshi watches the door close behind his daughter in absolute silence, the anger draining out of him. He’d known he’d have to tell her one day, but he never thought she’d find out first. Never expected his sweet, respectful, calm daughter to rage at him like that. Never in his life would he have expected such loud, unrepentant fury from her. 

Whatever had happened on that mission must have been bad. It must have been something astronomically bad for her to have such a strong reaction. So he goes to find Hatake. 

He finds him at the memorial stone. For a long time they just stand beside each other in silence. He can see Hana’s name on it clearly from his angle. He knows if he walked around to the back he’d see his mother’s name too. 

“What happened on that mission, Hatake? It was supposed to be a C-rank.”

Hatake is silent for a moment. Then, “Momochi Zabuza happened. Your daughter’s kill count went from zero to maybe twenty? I’m not sure exactly. I doubt she even knows for sure.”

Satoshi tenses at that. Momochi Zabuza. Maybe twenty kills on one mission. Her first mission out of the village. What. The. Hell. Happened. 

“She knows about Kiri. About the Ishihara clan.”

“You can thank Zabuza for that. He took one look at her and knew exactly what she was. Took a shine to her too. Took her hostage and taught her the hiding in the mist technique. She’s a natural at it.” Hatake sounds half proud and half repentant. 

“Hostage.”

Satoshi doesn’t even know what to think of that.

“He also told her to find him in a few years to see if she’s worthy of that sword of his.”

“Are you suggesting she’s a flight risk?”

“No. I’m just telling you what happened. She also tried to rip his throat out with her teeth when she thought her teammate died.”

Satoshi goes still at that. He’s done that before and succeeded. He’d known the Ishihara clan had a bit of an... instinct, knew before now it had manifested to a degree in his daughter, but... he’d never expected it to be that strong. She’s only half clan. It shouldn’t be that strong. Satoshi doesn’t want to think he’s misjudged his little one, but maybe he has. 

“She screamed at me for not telling her.”

Hatake is quiet again. Doesn’t even look at him before responding, “She has a right to. As someone whose the last of their clan too, she deserved to know a long time ago.” 

Yeah. Satoshi is starting to realize that. He just wanted to wait until she was ready. Until he was ready. His only memories of that clan are blood and screams and death. How was he supposed to tell her about the Ishihara clan when that’s the only thing he can remember about being there with them? His mother’s stories seemed so small in comparison, the scrolls seemed so small. Practically nothing compared to the smell of blood and rot. 

“She’s not a child anymore. The moment she got that hitai-ate she became a shinobi. Maybe it’s about time you treat her like the person she is, rather than the person you want her to be.”

Satoshi doesn’t say a word back as he watches Hatake walk away. 

Finally, he kneels by the memorial stone, one hand resting over Hana’s name. 

“Wife, you would be furious at me if you were here.”


	8. Closure

Akihiro hasn’t been back to the academy in years. Hadn’t wanted to ever walk through the doors of the building he’d once been so proud to work in again. After what happened, he just couldn’t face it. Couldn’t handle the empty seats refilled with children he didn’t know, hadn’t taught. Couldn’t handle the grief stricken faces of those he had. Couldn’t handle knowing he’d failed to protect five of them. Cowardly, he knows, but he just couldn’t do it. 

So he’d demanded, begged really, to return to active duty. The sandaime must have understood, because he had promised him he’d never have to be there again. Never have to walk through the doors again. 

So when he’s called back into the Sandaime’s office years later and asked to test the graduating class, he’s fully prepared to say no, to deny the Sandaime for the first time in his life. 

Until the Sandaime takes a drag from his pipe, exhales the smoke and tells him it’s his class he’d be testing. His class, his first class and his only class. The one he’d been so proud to teach, so honored. The one he’d failed to keep safe. The one he’d abandoned. He can still name them all. Could still point each and every one of them out of a crowd. 

Akihiro knows he’s lost as soon as he hears it. Knows he’s going to be there to see what they’ve become in his absence. It feels somewhere between an obligation and an honor to see them leave the academy. It’s nice and symmetrical, nearly poetic. 

So now here he is, sitting at the end of the table beside Mizuki waiting to see them display their mastery of the three basic academy jutsu. Akihiro isn’t going to lie and say he isn’t a bit excited to see them again. 

When the first of his students walks in, Akimichi Choji, it’s difficult not to beam with pride at the sight of him. The boy has grown, no longer barely knee high. When he succeeds at all the jutsu, Akihiro’s joy is genuine as he gives him the hitai-ate. 

Over and over he gets to see his class’s growth (he never quite stopped thinking of them as his) and he’s so proud of them. Shino is still as logically motivated as ever and preforms the jutsu with the straightforwardness Akihiro had always appreciated in the boy. Little Hinata is still as shy as ever, but he’s happy to see she does beautifully. Kiba and Akamaru make him grin at their brash confidence, not a drop of worry on the Inuzuka’s face. When his tiniest student, Katsumi, walks in, he’s actually surprised to see she’s grown a few inches, still the smallest but she’s catching up. When she beams so big and bright and very toothy at him he can’t help but smile back. She passes with flying colors, exactly as he would expect from her. Shikamaru’s jutsu are just as good though he’s far far less excited to show them off. Ino too does well, her confidence as high as it ever was. 

He doesn’t delude himself into thinking he’s really interested in the civilian born or Uzumaki. They weren’t his students. Could have been, if he hadn’t walked away, but he did. He lets Iruka handle passing Haruno and failing Uzumaki. 

When the last student is tested, Akihiro smiles lightly at Iruka. 

“They turned out wonderfully. You taught them well.”

Iruka’s cheeks color slightly as he scratches the scar on his nose. 

“Well, I had a good foundation to build on.”

Akihiro appreciates the compliment, he appreciates knowing his students will be alright more. Maybe the Sandaime knew what he was doing when he asked him to do this. It won’t bring his five lost students back, but it makes something settle in his chest to know his living ones no longer need his protection. 


	9. Picture Perfect

Kakashi is relieved on some level to know Zabuza and his partner are no longer a threat to his team’s lives, even more relieved to know Sasuke isn’t dead. That he hasn’t failed another person. 

Honestly, he’s more concerned Zabuza is going to try to kidnap his kunoichi now. Seeing his littlest student dangling from the nukenin’s grasp had sent a bolt of panic through him. Even as furious and bloodthirsty as she was, Kakashi knows she wouldn’t have been able to save herself if Zabuza had decided to kill her. 

Watching her call the mist up on Zabuza’s orders stuns him for a moment. Makes him want to shake her until she tells him exactly when the man had time to teach her that. Satoshi is going to eviscerate him if he gets his daughter stolen by a nukenin. 

He doesn’t like the idea of letting her help kill Gato and his men, but Zabuza isn’t wrong. Katsumi looks like she’s completely lost in her bloodlust and he’s not sure he can safely have her around the client until she calms down. He can’t have her killing the client and he can’t watch her at all times when he has Naruto and Sasuke to worry about too. 

Zabuza pushes her towards the mist like she’s a hunting hound he’s turning loose on a rabbit. She does a beautiful impression of one, certainly. The loud, animalistic growling coming from her throat and the blood on her mouth from biting Zabuza really helps cement the image as she shoots into the mist like a Kunai being thrown. No hesitation whatsoever. Unnerving to see after watching her nearly break down over making her first kill. 

He can’t see what happens in the mist. Can’t see if she needs help. He can hear her snarling though. And the screaming. So much screaming cut short abruptly. He’d seen the way Haku and Zabuza had waited to join her after the screams had begun. Kakashi is pretty confident most of those kills will be Katsumi’s. He doesn’t like it, but better she grows comfortable killing sooner rather than later, he supposes. Hopefully Satoshi won’t be too angry when he finds out. That would be less than pleasant. 

The screams taper off slowly, until there’s just an eerie silence. He can’t hear Katsumi growling anymore either. He’s about to run into the mist to find her himself, when Haku walks out leading his absolutely blood soaked Kunoichi out by the hand. Zabuza come sauntering out last, the absolutely pleased expression on his face makes Kakashi want to stab him in the neck. 

Katsumi is his main concern, though. Her eyes are huge and she’s breathing hard and she looks like a satiated cat. Her shirt isn’t green anymore. It’s red and brown from the amount of blood on it. When she stumbles over to stand at his side, his eyes search her for any injuries. He did promise to kill Zabuza if she got hurt, after all. 

Kakashi often hates that his sharingan commits everything it sees to perfect memory. He doesn’t want to remember his little genin looking like she just survived a war. Even if it’s clear it was skewed in her favor. 

Kakashi isn’t going to let this happen again. He has to find a way to talk her down without letting her end up like this. There has to be a way. 


	10. Unacceptable

Shikamaru hears the screams of pain before he hears the laughter. Wild and hysterical and so familiar. So wrong. He knows that laugh and it doesn’t sound like that. It never sounds like that. Katsumi has a quiet laugh. A contained one. 

He changes course and picks up the speed. Whatever is happening can’t be good if she sounds like that. 

When he gets there, Ino and Choji seconds behind him, his heart drops in his chest. Katsumi. Alone and surrounded by blood. Where are Naruto and Sasuke? Why aren’t they helping her? There’s an Oto nin aiming a kunai at her chest and two more on the ground bleeding. Her swords are discarded on the ground. And she’s laughing and coughing blood. Not even trying to move. To fight. 

Shikamaru makes the handseal for the shadow possession jutsu. He refuses to watch her die. When it takes, he considers using the Shadow strangle jutsu, but that’s too chakra intensive and he needs to get her to a medic. 

Her laughter increases when she sees the Oto nin stuck in his shadow. 

Ino and Choji are already moving to her side when she chokes out a joking greeting to him between bouts of laughter. 

He’s furious. She was going to die. Was going to let herself die. And she’s making jokes? Shikamaru would shake her if he wasn’t holding the Oto nin in place. If she didn’t look like absolute hell. 

He settles for telling her to shut up. Finally her laughter dies off. He can hear her wheezing with every breath she takes. He hardly pays Sasuke mind when he comes out of the hole he was apparently in to try and tear the Oto nins apart. Shikamaru would happily help him if he didn’t have Katsumi laying on the ground coated in blood. 

Patience run out, he mimes slamming the kunai in the Oto’s hand against his temple. With luck, he hit him hard enough to give him brain damage. Katsumi looks worse up close and Shikamaru wants to murder the Oto nin on the ground. The girl is struggling to get up. If she knows what’s good for her, she’ll stay down. 

Katsumi’s neck is bleeding sluggishly under a ruined bandage. The skin he can see is black and purple with a bruise the shape of a hand. Shikamaru’s blood runs cold at the sight of a goddamn handprint around her throat. He can distinctly make out the shape of fingers. Any harder and he’s sure her throat would have been crushed. He has to clench his teeth to keep from cursing. 

When he checks her over he can feel a break in her ribs. Just one, thankfully. It only increases his fury though. If he hadn’t heard her laughing. If he’d been slower. If he’d been further away. She’d be dead. 

That’s an unacceptable thought. 


	11. Bold as Brass

Ibiki isn’t expecting much from most of the genin in front of him. Over a hundred of them are in the room, he’s confident he can reduce that number down to around twenty. He’s done it before. 

He can already guess the ones who will make it. The Yamanaka is obvious. So is the Aburame and Hyuugas. The Inuzuka isn’t even being subtle with the dog barking. Uchiha’s eyes are more than enough to get him through. 

It’s obvious the Nara is helping the girl in front of him cheat. Using his shadow to write the answers for her. Strike one for him if the way the sentinel watching him is scribbling means anything. The girl too. The blonde brat in front is clearly going to fail. It doesn’t look like he’s written a single thing. 

The girl in front of the Nara looks like she’s saying a prayer. How odd. The Nara gave her the answers. Of course, her teammate is the blonde. She probably realizes he’s going to cause her team to fail. 

Ibiki starts to turn away when a movement from the girl catches his eyes. Handseals under the table. Slow and deliberate. Slow enough it’s hard to actually notice the movements at first. Impressive body control for a genin. Hidden carefully from sight of the sentinels too. No strike yet it seems. He wonders what she’s doing. 

He gets his answer when mist forms in the room, blocking all movement from sight. Little chit. No subtlety at all it seems. 

He can’t hear her move, but he’s certain he knows what she did when the mist clears a few seconds later and her blonde teammate is staring at his test in confusion and she’s doing a piss poor job of pretending to be bewildered. Strike two for her unless the sentinels caught anything else. Probably three actually. One for switching papers and one for the mist. Maybe four if the sentinels caught her rewriting answers on her new paper. So Four total, if he’s right. Cutting it close.

The Uchiha keeps sending glares her way. So. He knows she did that too. The Nara just looks resigned, like he figured it was inevitable. 

Ibiki wonders how many genin were smart enough to take advantage of the temporary shield she gave them to cheat. 

She meets his eyes for a moment and he makes sure she can see his displeasure on his face. He has to give her points for sheer boldness. She looks entirely unrepentant. 

Cheeky brat.


	12. Through A Mother’s Eyes

Yoshino is a mother and a wife and proud of it. She was a Kunoichi first though. And just as proud of that. She would still choose her family over being a Kunoichi any day of the week, though. 

Maybe that’s why she struggles to understand what makes a father leave his motherless child alone in an apartment for months at a time. Shikaku would never dream of doing such a thing to Shikamaru. 

But then, Satoshi was a different man when she was a Kunoichi. When she saw him regularly because Hana was her friend and they picked out baby clothes together and spent afternoons at each other’s houses. When the children were so very small and Hana held her little girl like she was afraid the world would steal her away. 

Yoshino knows Hana’s death marked a distinct line between the Satoshi she knew and the Satoshi who exists now. The Satoshi of before was wild, yes. Gone often too. But his smiles back then were actually smiles, not teeth bared in a mockery of happiness. That Satoshi was planning to take less missions, shorter missions to spend more time helping raise his daughter. To be with his family. That Satoshi was so very proud of his little family. 

Then Hana died, on her first mission since having the baby. Suddenly he was in the village just enough that the child didn’t cry at the sight of him. Just enough to remind himself he had to keep coming back. Yoshino never approved of his withdrawal from his friends or the way he hid his daughter away in that apartment with only the neighbors for company. 

When Shikamaru brought home Hana’s little girl on the first day of the academy, Yoshino hadn’t known what to think other than, _oh she has Hana’s eyes_. 

When he keeps bringing her over, Yoshino is genuinely happy. She knows Shikaku had once been friends with Satoshi, when Satoshi was less angry and broken and one step off from either becoming a nukenin or taking a suicide mission with no intentions of even trying to survive it. She knows Shikaku is hesitant at first over seeing the little girl be friends with their son. Yoshino is also certain he’ll warm up to her quick enough. 

Then Satoshi just leaves little Katsumi. For months. With no one to take care of her. Yoshino is equal parts furious and worried.So, she not so subtly hints at Shikaku that Katsumi should stay with them. Just until Satoshi gets back. 

So Katsumi comes to stay and Yoshino feels her worry dissipate until she sees how the girl is. She trains. Far more than Yoshino has ever seen a peace time child train. Far harder too. Yoshino wonders if she’s ever actually played a game in her life aside from shogi with Shikamaru. Wonders if the girl ever had a single toy or if Satoshi just gave her that sword instead. She would buy the girl a doll if she thought for a minute Katsumi would actually know what to do with it. 

When she takes her shopping with her the worry grows. She only buys practical things. She doesn’t glance at the pretty dresses or the make up or toys or anything that would be purchased out of sheer want. Nothing that is bought for the pleasure of the thing. 

Yoshino wonders at that. Did that naturally develop or was it something Satoshi actively taught the girl?

Either way, it concerns her. A child should be a child. Not a mini soldier. Yoshino is certain Hana would never have allowed this. 


	13. Troublesome

Shikaku is unsurprised to see Katsumi show up on his doorstep one random night. He is surprised to see her now though. He’s not sure she knows but her team was a week away from being declared MIA on a C-rank. Nearly a month late coming back. Shikaku had half a mind to send a team after them. 

She’s quiet and subdued and there’s no smile on her face when she greets them. No sharp gleaming teeth in a wide smile the way he’s so used to. She makes a beeline to her room, doesn’t explain what’s wrong and goes to find Shikamaru. 

Shikaku knows she’ll tell his son whatever happened. He also knows Shikamaru will never betray her trust by telling him. There are no mission reports yet. None that have come across his desk at least. He figures he can give her a day or two to talk to him or Yoshino about it before hunting down the reports. 

When neither of his children are on time for dinner, he has the dubious honor of going to find them. He finds them where the clan feeds the deer. Shikamaru passed out on his back, snoring softly, and Katsumi curled up against him like a cat, silent as the grave. He considers letting them sleep longer. Katsumi has bags under her eyes and clearly needs the rest, but Yoshino would be angry. Besides, she looks thinner too. She needs food more than rest. 

She’s quiet over dinner too. Not trading good natured barbs with Shikamaru or asking Yoshino how to cook this or that, not asking Shikaku for scenarios to think through either. He doesn’t like it. 

When she wakes with a quiet scream into a pillow that night, Shikaku nearly goes to her room and demands she tell him what happened on the mission. Instead, he watches from his position in the living room as she stumbles out of her room into the hallway and slips into Shikamaru’s room. He can hear the rustling and grumbles of his son but soon enough it’s silent again. 

That settles it. The next day he goes hunting for the mission file. Reads the individual reports from her team and wants to throw Hatake off a cliff. He chose to continue an A-rank mission with a team of fresh genin. Two of them made their first kills. Katsumi went and did an unsanctioned intel gathering side mission, and got caught doing it. She thought the Uchiha was dead. She ended up with an estimated kill count of twenty-two by the time the mission ended. 

Shikaku is furious. It doesn’t matter that the mission was a success. No fresh genin should have been on that mission. As soon as Hatake realized it was mislabeled as a C-rank he should have turned around and brought them back. 

Shikaku considers asking Inoichi to give her a mental evaluation. Technically since she’s a genin only her Sensei can ask for that, but he thinks Inoichi would be willing to do one off the books. 

Something to consider. 


	14. Bodyguard

Iwashi is busy fighting a pair of Suna nin when a little green blur gets flung by him and all that crosses his mind is _Fuck_. It’s the little genin that’s been tearing through men twice her size while fighting blind in mist like a fucking Kiri nin. He really doesn’t want to have to save her fucking neck but she’s a genin and a comrade and he could hear the snapping of bones when she hit the wall. 

He manages to dispatch his opponents and turns to save her from a premature death only to hear an animalistic snarl from her and before he knows what’s happening the brat has her teeth (her very very sharp teeth, _what the fuck?_ ) buried in the Suna nin’s throat. She’s not letting go either. Goddammit. 

A feral goddamn genin, of course. She’s still a comrade though. And she’s distracted. Iwashi figures she’ll need someone to cover her until the Suna nin is dead enough for her tastes. So he guards her. Doesn’t let a single Suna or Oto nin get near her. Blocks every kunai and Shuriken that flies in her direction. 

He’s almost impressed by the viciousness. The Suna nin managed to stab her in the side before he finally died. She doesn’t seem seem to care. About that or the broken ribs. Just hops up and goes back to fighting. Blood absolutely soaking her face and neck. 

Shit. He’d keep guarding her but she looks like something people should be guarded from. Whatever that kid is, he’s damn glad she’s a Konoha nin. He’d be pissed if he had to fight off a kid trying to gnaw his throat out. 

Whatever. He has his own kills to make. Can’t get showed up by a pint sized genin. 


	15. Not A Pup Anymore

Kakashi was briefed about the possibility of an invasion. All the jounin were. Most of the Chuunin were smart enough to figure out something was wrong too. Only the genin were oblivious. Or mostly oblivious. 

Sasuke was refusing to speak to anyone since his match with Haruno and the sealing of the curse mark on his neck. Naruto was being trained by Jiraiya. That left Katsumi. His intelligent, vicious little Kunoichi. So he pours three weeks of training into her. Makes sure she’s quick enough to run away if needed. Makes sure she can dodge anything coming her way because friendly fire is just as dangerous as unfriendly fire. He even sits her down and teaches her to scent out friends from foe. If an invasion happens, he’s certain she’ll be fighting in her mist. She needs to know who not to kill. Not just to kill. 

He can’t warn her or any of his pups about what might happen. It drives him up a wall because he wants them to know. Wants them to be prepared. He’s trained them hard since getting them but being caught off guard would easily negate all that. 

The day of the final stage, he can tell Katsumi has over prepared for her match. She looses but he doesn’t care. It was a good enough showing. A promotion might happen. He doesn’t care much about that right now though. 

When the little thing grabs his hand he knows there’s a problem. She isn’t the touchy feely type. When she starts tapping code on his wrist, his blood runs cold. 

An sand shinobi stationed near the bathrooms disguised as an ANBU. Dammit. He knows immediately that there will be an invasion. No more wondering. No more hoping the intel is wrong. 

He can’t outright say it though. Can’t tell her. So he does the best he can and tells her to stay near him and keep her eyes open. Her teeth bared. She’s smart. She should understand. 

When the genjutsu begins, he’s pleased to see he doesn’t need to wake her himself. Good pup. 

He’s even more pleased in a base, animalistic way when she immediately falls into step with him. Hunting out enemies by scent in the mist with her feels like hunting with _pack_. She manages to match him step for step but is smart enough to know when to slip behind him. When he needs to handle it. Smart pup. If only his other pups were like that. 

He doesn’t want to send her out chasing a Bijuu. Doesn’t want the only pup he has that he can currently keep safe out of his sight. But she’s not helpless. So he sends her to fetch his blonde pup and the lazy one she likes so much. 

When she’s gone, he bares his own teeth under his mask and cuts another shinobi down with his kunai. Can’t have anyone catching his pup from behind. 


	16. Gossip Mill

“Hatake!”

Kakashi isn’t sure what he did to cause Raidou to yell at him from across the Jounin lounge but he’s not sure he wants to know. One of his pups is in the hospital, one just got released after fighting and subduing a raging jinchuuriki, and the third burned a handful of people alive and seems entirely unbothered by the fact his first kill was so messy. He’s got more important concerns than whatever Raidou wants. 

Regardless, he hums in response and flips to the next page of his _Icha Icha_. Better to get it over with. 

“You’re the one whose training Ishihara’s kid right?”

Kakashi’s eye flicks up to consider Raidou for a moment. He’s not sure why he wants to know about Katsumi. 

“She’s one of mine.”

“You hear what that little nightmare did?”

Kakashi isn’t going to like this. He just knows it. Should have kept that pup closer to him. 

“Maa, she does a lot of things, you’ll have to specify.”

“She ripped some poor Suna nin’s throat out. With her teeth. Like ten people witnessed it. Wouldn’t let go until he stopped twitching apparently.” Raidou looks torn between entertained and vaguely green at the thought. 

Kakashi wants to say that can’t be right. Wants to say his pup wouldn’t do that. But he’s seen her teeth, he watched her try to rip Zabuza’s throat out. It’s a _miracle_ she stopped at one person, really. 

“Did she?”

“Oh yeah, what the hell have you been teaching your brats?”

_Not that_ , Kakashi thinks, _that’s all her_. 

“Maa, just making sure they’re strong shinobi.”

Raidou snorts, looks like he doesn’t believe it for a second. He doesn’t look disapproving of what she did, though. Interesting. 

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s all.”

Kakashi ignores that. Decides the conversation is over. He has even more important concerns now. His pup is in the rumor mill. For ripping out throats. Kami, he’s going to have to beat ANBU off with a stick. And remind Danzo she’s under his protection. He’s investing in a muzzle. What a mess. At least she’s not dead, though.


	17. Age Appropriate Training

Gai is just finishing with one thousand pushes when there’s a knock on his door. He grins bright and happy as he goes to the door and flings it open. 

“Genma! My youthful friend! What can I help you with on this day?”

Genma is standing there with a solemn eyed toddler propped on his hip and a bag thrown over his shoulder. 

“Uh yea good morning Gai. I got a mission and I need you to watch Ishihara’s kid for awhile. Her name’s Katsumi, she’s really easy just give her some age appropriate training or something and feed her on time, she’ll be great. Oh and her bed time is seven. I think. That’s what Anko told me at least.”

He holds the child out to Gai expectantly. 

“Yosh! It is an honor to help care for the youth of Konoha in the very beginnings of their springtime of youth!”

Gai takes the child from Genma with great enthusiasm and gives her a beaming smile. She almost immediately bursts into tears, trying to twist in his hands to reach for Genma. What a youthful display of love for her babysitter!

“Right, well have fun. This is her stuff.” Genma sets her bag just inside of the door and shushins away. 

“It will be okay, my youthful little friend! We will have much fun! You are old enough to walk, yes? We shall run laps around the apartment complex! A good start for your stamina building! We shall start with fifteen laps! And if we cannot do that, we will do thirty sit ups!

The child looks bewildered when he sets her on the ground, but she’s not crying anymore. So small and already so filled with youthful determination! He is inspired! This shall be a most youthful experience!


	18. Loose Lips Sink Ships

Zabuza is just finishing a job near the border of The Land of Fire when he hears it. Some drunks at the bar he’s in going on about some failed invasion of Konoha. Haku is off gathering herbs for his medicines and he’s stuck waiting for the brat to get back so he listens in as he drinks. 

“Konoha has some kind of demon living in it. I swear, I heard from Ryouta who heard from a Suna nin that they have some girl there who rips people’s throats out. With her teeth!”

“Bullshit, man. No little girl does that. Ryouta was probably drunk when he heard that.”

“No, I swear he wasn’t. This girl apparently had these massive teeth like a dog or a wolf or something. The Suna nin thought she was Kiri at first. I don’t know what the fuck Konoha’s on but that’s messed up even for a hidden village.”

Zabuza grins as he hears this and takes a swig from his sake bottle. So the fucking brat is still alive. He can’t say he’s shocked. If that little Ishihara was pissed when she thought Haku killed her little teammate, he can only imagine how fucking pissed she was when her village got invaded. Damn shame he wasn’t able to witness it. He’s sure it was a beautiful display of Kiri bloodlust. Fuck, he should have kept the brat. Probably have kept things fucking lively if he had. Mei sure wasn’t happy when he told her he found an Ishihara and let Konoha keep her. He got a fucking earful for “not bringing home one of Kiri’s lost children.” As if the little bitch wouldn’t have fought him the entire way. 

Still, he’s fucking thrilled to hear she hasn’t lost her teeth. Maybe she’ll earn Kubikiribōchō yet. 


	19. Ultimatum

Shikaku is already angry when he shows up at the little apartment. He doesn’t even knock as he walks into the living room. Just stalks in and glares at the man packing weapons away on the couch. 

“What’s going through your head, Ishihara? At this point I’m not sure if you think at all anymore.” He gets straight to the point, they both know why he’s here. 

“I have a mission-“

“One you were fully capable of turning down. You weren’t ordered to go on it. Any one of the dozen other shinobi qualified for it could have gone instead. You weren’t necessary for it.” 

“Jiraiya asked me-“

“I’m aware. Asked, not ordered. There’s a difference, Ishihara. You do remember you have a thirteen year old daughter? Who just survived an invasion and hasn’t seen you since before that? Who was hospitalized too? Her name is Katsumi, in case you forgot.”

“I know I have a daughter. She just got promoted she doesn’t need me hovering over her anymore.” Ishihara shoots him a venomous look as he works. 

“She’s a thirteen year old child. A flak jacket doesn’t change that. She’s a thirteen year old child whose spent more time with my family and your neighbors than she ever has with you. ‘Hovering’ my ass.”

“This is none of your-“

“Enough. Do you think you just get to stop being a parent once your kid gets a flak jacket? Do you think suddenly because a kid is a Chuunin they don’t need their father? I get you like to run from your issues. Hana died and you’ve been running ever since. We all know it. She’s your daughter, though. Try actually being a parent instead of running off to Ame!”

Shikaku nearly yells the last part. He’s sick of this man only being a parent when it suits him. Only when it’s easy.

Ishihara bares his teeth and opens his mouth to argue but Shikaku doesn’t give him a chance. 

“This mission could be up to a year long. At least. If you leave now without even saying goodbye, I can almost guarantee that Katsumi will never forgive you.”

“You don’t know that. She’s a shinobi. She understands our duty to the village.”

“She does. She also understands duty to family. You’re a good shinobi, Ishihara. No one would disagree there, but one day you’re going to wake up and realize you missed your daughter’s entire life. And you’re going to hate yourself for it. When that day comes, you better hope it’s not after the day she gives up on you does.”

Ishihara glares silently at Shikaku. He can already tell the man isn’t listening. Ishihara’s always been too stubborn once he decides he’s right. 

Shikaku shakes his head and turns to leave. Pausing at the door to throw one last parting shot. 

“If you take this mission, I want her stuff on my doorstep before you go. She shouldn’t have to move it herself.”


	20. Paperwork

Tsunade looks over the last of the files wearily. She’s had to pour over the files of every genin that participated in the exams since most ended up fighting in the invasion. Yamanaka Ino, Hyuuga Hinata, and Inuzuka Kiba were easy to rule out. All three had either lost their matches or not fought at all, and all three were stuck in a genjutsu for the invasion. Hyuuga Neji was another reject, too much arrogance in his fight with Naruto and not enough planning. Akimichi Choji was in caught in the genjutsu. 

Realistically, she has six files to consider. Nara Shikamaru. Uzumaki Naruto. Haruno Sakura. Aburame Shino. Uchiha Sasuke. Ishihara Katsumi. 

Aburame Shino would have been a good Chuunin but he didn’t even think about getting his team or reporting to a superior before chasing after the Ichibi. Reluctantly, she puts his file aside. 

Nara Shikamaru is an obvious choice. A genius that will rival his father someday. Level headed, able to plan and strategize. He was strong enough to hold five Oto nin in place until back up arrived. He’s the first file to be moved into her new promotion stack. 

Haruno Sakura is another clear yes. She broke the genjutsu and was able to successfully lead a team to back Aburame up against the Ichibi. The mokuton user was strong enough to hold the bijuu in place just long enough to wake its container up. Tsunade tosses her file onto the Nara’s. 

Uzumaki Naruto is a difficult one. She’s personally invested in the blonde loudmouth. He won his match, but only due to using the Kyuubi’s chakra. Able to plan on the fly, but would he be able to lead a team? She’s not sure he wouldn’t put his emotions above rationality. It’s with extreme reluctance that she says no. 

She already knows she won’t promote the Uchiha, regardless of the council’s wishes. He lost in the preliminaries. While he did fight in the invasion, and fought well, Tsunade is deeply concerned about his mental state. The fact he’s flagged as a potential flight risk by his own Sensei doesn’t help either. She hardly needs to think before putting him aside. 

It’s the last file and the biggest one that she’s most torn about. Ishihara Katsumi. Not Nara level intelligent but damn close. Lost her match but displayed clear ability to strategize while taking care not to hurt her comrade more than necessary. Able to think and with just enough empathy to keep her comrades’ well-being in mind. Discreetly reported a false ANBU to Hatake before the invasion began. The reports from the invasion are what interest her though. There are a lot. All saying the same thing: too skilled to be a genin, would terrify enemy shinobi if she was promoted, ripped out a throat using her teeth, didn’t stop fighting even after injuries, not enough self control in a fight, still able to follow orders though. 

Tsunade is fully prepared to say no when she gets to the last report. A recommendation. From Inuzuka Tsume. Apparently, she’s spent the past three weeks teaching the girl to control her instincts and is willing to take fully responsibility for her if she’s promoted to Chuunin for the standard six month probationary period. Well then. A recommendation from a clan head. Not just vouching but taking responsibility for the girl in question. That makes the decision a bit easier. 

She slips the file in with the other two before she can change her mind. That done, she digs through her sake drawer and pulls a bottle out. Hopefully she didn’t make a mistake with these three. 


	21. Karma Thy Name Is Nara

When the board throws his name out along with the name of the kid who choked Katsumi, Shikamaru is suddenly much more invested in his match. That kid left a damned handprint around Katsumi’s skinny neck. It was practically wrapped around her entire neck like a collar. He’s been planning out ways to make sure none of the Oto team advance to the final round since they announced they needed preliminaries. The Suna kid with his puppets has already dealt with the girl. That poison he used was no joke. She’s just lucky Konoha has experience dealing with Suna poisons from the past wars. 

Shikamaru takes one look at the guy and decides that the arrogant, cocky look on his face despite the clear injuries just doesn’t suit him. He could play it like a long game of shogi and toy with him for awhile, but Shikamaru wants to see him gone now. He’s certain he can finish this match in one move. 

Hayate calls for start and Shikamaru doesn’t give the idiot a chance to move. It’s always a shock for people when they see Nara’s are lazy by choice, not because they can’t be fast when necessary. He flashes through the hand seals and when his shadow catches Zaku, Shikamaru feels a dark satisfaction. 

When he shifts and flips through the next handseals, he watches the shadowy hand creep up the Oto nin’s body to his neck. All he can think about is just how easy it would be to snap it. He’s not going to kill him though. Not today. This method takes more patience, more control, but he has a message he wants to send. 

Shikamaru can see the legitimate fear in his opponent’s eyes. Can tell he thinks Shikamaru really will kill him. Can feel his struggles against his shadow and wants to laugh at that. At this distance? It’s not happening. Zaku doesn’t have a chance in hell of breaking loose. 

When the kid starts turning blue, Shikamaru expects Hayate to call the match. When he doesn’t, Shikamaru just applies more pressure and watches as Zaku’s eyes roll back into his head and he feels the fight go out of him. Well. It’s a drag but he probably shouldn’t kill him. 

Shikamaru releases the jutsu and watches the kid crumple to the floor. The hand print forming around his throat is easily the most satisfying sight Shikamaru has seen in a while. 


	22. Pack Dynamics

When Hatake approaches her about teaching one of his pups restraint, Tsume laughs in his face. She’s already heard from Hiro about the brat that went and chewed some Suna nin’s throat out mid-invasion. She doesn’t even need to meet the brat to know she’s never been taught self control or instinct management in her life. She agrees, on the condition that she gets full control over the brat’s training for the time she’s with her. No interference or visitors. Pups don’t need distractions like that when they’re still learning. 

The day the pup arrives at the compound, it’s clear she’s overwhelmed. She reeks of nervousness and confusion. Pupils blown wide and lips constantly twitching up to show teeth, she’s practically glued to Hatake’s hip. So, she views him as pack leader. Maybe this will be easier than Tsume thought if she’s already willing to follow Hatake’s lead even if she’s unsure. 

The clan was told about her impending arrival a few days ago, and since then had been torn between wariness and visible excitement, because it’s not everyday a stray pup finds its way to their compound. Watching their reactions at the sight of the brat tells Tsume a lot. They’re curious, and to some degree pitying because it’s terribly clear the pup has never been properly socialized. No pup should look so fearful and ready to lash out while their alpha is with them. It’s not normal. The way she reacts to the clan members’ smiling or glancing at her is concerning. She shifts between almost relaxed at the sight of their sharp toothed smiles and absolutely defensive and ready to bite whenever someone is too close to her. Tsume wonders if anyone bothered to teach the brat how pack works. Hatake may have asked her to teach the pup some restraint but she needs socialization before restraint comes. Needs to know where in a pack she falls or she’ll never be able to learn hold back, because she won’t be able to trust her team to help her even if it’s obvious they will. 

Tsume doesn’t go easy on the brat. She pushes her until she lashes out, until she tries to fight like the alpha she’s not. Then she pins her to the ground, face in the dirt and makes sure the message sinks in that she’s a pup, pups don’t get to play alpha. 

Hana watches the brat with a wary eye as she paces the edge of the compound like a caged animal. 

“It may be too late, you know. She’s a bit old to train. Might be feral her whole life.”

Tsume snorts at that, “Brat might be too old to ever fully socialize, but it’s not too late to make her functional. She’ll learn. Her and Kiba already had it out the other day. They’ve figured out their dynamic. She’s not a lost cause.”

Hana doesn’t seem convinced, but she nods all the same. Kiba is proving to be more help with the Ishihara pup than Tsume expected. More than once she’s witnessed the girl turn to him for direction when she’s not sure how to react to something. She watches Kiba’s responses and has Often mimicked them in a much more subdued way. The pup is clearly feral, but in the quiet, wary way someone who’s used to being alone is. 

It’s been nearly two weeks and already Tsume can see progress. It’s stilted and slow and more than once it seems like for every step forward it’s two steps back, but Tsume is stubborn and Ishihara is just a pup, no matter how mean or feral she acts. She’ll learn quickly. Pups always do. 


	23. Justifications Are Just Excuses

When Jiraiya approaches him about a long term mission to Amegakure, Satoshi is fully prepared to say no. There was just an invasion, he was nearly crippled, his daughter was right in the middle of the fighting and nearly paid dearly for it. He wants to collect her from the Nara’s now that he’s healed enough to take care of the both of them again. He wants her where he can protect her. 

But Jiraiya emphasizes how important infiltrating that rundown village is. How there’s a threat there that may grow to harm this village. His home. Katsumi’s home. Ultimately, it’s not much of a debate. Satoshi is willing to risk his daughter’s anger if it means she has a future empty of war. He’d rather she live to hate him, than she die loving him. He sends a prayer to Kami that she’ll understand his reasons one day. 

When Shikaku shows up to his home and berates him as he prepares, Satoshi is furious and hurt and just wants to go to his daughter and explain why he’s doing this, but goodbyes are hard. He’d rather she not see his indecision, rather she not witness his doubt that this is the right thing to do. He’s always done his best not to let her see his weakness, doesn’t want her to ever doubt her father is strong enough to protect her.

So he packs her things slowly. Looks over every last thing. Her weapons that he’d purchased for her, the best money can buy because poorly made weapons can get the user killed. Her clothes, all so plain and practical, he’d bought her a pretty kimono once for the festival celebrating the Kyuubi’s defeat, but she’d never worn it. Practicality over looks has always been her mode of operation. He looks at the Ishihara scrolls she’s kept lovingly in a nicely carved wooden box, he taught her the Katas of the Ishihara Kenjutsu style as best he could, modifying them so she can use them alone. He and Hana had wanted two children. He’d always intended on training them together, showing them how to be proper Ishihara. Then Hana died and he buried that dream with her. He even digs through Hana’s things and finds her jewelry and her favorite weapons, delicate looking Neko-te she’d used whenever someone made the mistake of getting too close. He’d meant to give these to Katsumi for her Chuunin promotion. He hopes she finds them. He thinks she’ll appreciate them even if she doesn’t use them. 

Satoshi stares at the fridge for a long time. His daughter’s life mapped out on it. Hana had started it before Katsumi was even been born. Her first ultrasound photo beginning the tradition. When Hana died, He’d continued it as best he could. He figures Hana would have liked it. He knows how much it would have meant to Hana to see the fridge door fill up with their daughter’s life. He leaves the fridge as is. He’s paid the landlord for the next three years, so he doesn’t have to worry about the apartment being given away. He is determined to make it back, fully intends for this to be his final mission too. He sets up traps carefully, doesn’t add a single one Katsumi wouldn’t already be prepared for, and goes to drop her things off at the Nara’s. 

It leaves a sour taste in his mouth to do it. But he has a duty. To the village and his daughter. He just hopes one day she’ll understand why. 


	24. Checkmate

Asuma freely admits he hasn’t paid much attention to the progress of any genin other than his own. They may have come prepackaged, but he still has to make sure they’re capable. Two-thirds of his team made it to the final round, not bad for genin six months out of the academy. 

Watching Shikamaru stand across an arena from one of Hatake’s brats, the little Kunoichi he’s heard about from all his students at some point, he’s almost entirely certain Shikamaru shouldn’t have a problem winning. She’s clearly a Kenjutsu specialist, even if she likes to use mist and Kawarimi liberally, even if she poisons those blades. She’ll have to get close to him, Asuma expects a short match. 

He’s not surprised she immediately pulls the mist down. Shikamaru has spent a month working on sensing chakra just for this problem. Kid will never be a good sensor, but it’s just enough for this. As expected, it fails. He is surprised when an explosive tag is set off and dissipates some of the mist. He figures Shikamaru probably did that until he sees the kid jumping clear, his face showing surprise even if most people wouldn’t be able to tell. So Hatake’s brat was willing to give up her cover on the off chance of winning via explosive tag. Bit of a gambler. 

When she starts dodging Shikamaru’s shadow, taking clear care to pay attention to both his shadow and her own, Asuma has to be grudgingly impressed. She’s fast and light on her feet. Clearly trying to get closer to him without getting caught. 

Smart enough to bail out with a kawarimi when she can’t dodge too. Asuma is glad he didn’t bet on the length of this match. He’d be loosing Ryos by now. He can see her crouched in one of the trees in the little grove of them on the edge of the arena. She doesn’t look happy. Asuma looks back at his student. No rush from him at all. Seems perfectly content to wait her out. 

Not a good move, the Kunoichi is covering the trees in explosive tags. She’s gonna blow Shikamaru sky high if he tries to follow her into it. He’s not entirely sure what her plan is when she throws a kunai at Shikamaru. Followed by a smoke bomb and a kunai with an explosive tag. But he can see she’s trying to herd him somewhere. Ahh. The branch she switched with. Too bad Shikamaru saw through that. He made it a point to move out of his range and her range. Inviting her to make try a different tactic. She doesn’t. 

She switches with the branch again and launches another Kunai with an explosive tag at Shikamaru. Not very creative today. 

Mist is pulled down again, and when it clears there’s a larger branch stabbed with Kunai on the ground. Asuma’s gaze swings to the trees. He can see Shikamaru there. Can see his expression of mild surprise at the sight of the explosive tags covering the trees. The girl really did go overboard with those. Asuma waits for her to trigger them, but she doesn’t. 

So she’s out the the tags’ trigger range. And she can’t move much closer because she’d either be in his range from the trees or too close to the branch he used to kawarimi. Boxed in. Asuma expects her to forfeit there. She has no good moves left and no way to move forward. It’s checkmate. 

Shikamaru realizes she’s can’t trigger the tags too and immediately drops into his thinking pose. Asuma is surprised by that. It doesn’t seem like the kind of match the kid would need to think so hard for. 

When the girl starts walking forward, towards The branch, Asuma raises an eye brow. So she’s going to try to trigger them. She’ll get caught immediately, it’s a bad move. She’s clearly measuring out the distance between her and that branch though. She must know she’s too close. 

Shikamaru’s eyes flick open a half second before the Kunoichi sets her tags off. He doesn’t seem surprised by that either, he immediately kawarimi’s with the branch again as the trees go up in flames. He can see her flip lightning fast through a set of handseals though. Flipping to the ram seal at the same moment Shikamaru appears. 

Asuma needs another cigarette. Watching sharply pointed spears of water explode out towards his genin was not something he was prepared to witness. The tendrils stop just short of Shikamaru even as he’s jerking back and away from them. 

Finally the girl has a sword out. And she’s not giving Shikamaru a chance to make his handseals for his shadow possession. Either she’s extremely intelligent or she’s familiar with his jutsu more so than most. 

Shikamaru doesn’t look worried though. Asuma can spot why. She’s chasing him. Straight into the shadows of the arena. As soon as Shikamaru jumps clear of her sword he knows the match is over. The kid is already done with the handseals before his feet fully touch the ground. 

He can’t hear Shikamaru’s voice, but he can read his lips. He’s caught her. Asuma can tell she’s done fighting too. Even if she’s probably irritated, she doesn’t try to fight the shadow possession. Just forfeits finally. 

Asuma lights a new cigarette. Took Shikamaru long enough to win. Lazy brat. Girl was good though. He’ll give her that much. 


	25. Troublesome Daughters Are Paperwork Generators

Shikaku is normally prepared for most things. A benefit of being the best tactician Konoha has, he’s generally unsurprised by anything. The antics of Shikamaru and Katsumi are no exceptions. Shikamaru always complains about having to put effort in, and prefers sleep and cloud watching over just about everything with the exceptions of Shogi and Katsumi. Katsumi is a workaholic with just enough social skills to make her more likable than either Ishihara or Hatake. She’ll growl or bare her teeth when she’s not happy, and she toes the line between insomnia and oversleeping. A line he wasn’t aware existed until he met the girl.

So when she starts watching him constantly, he knows something is wrong. She’s clearly been more of an insomniac lately if the dark bags under her eyes mean anything and her green eyes are fever bright watching him. He’s expecting her to finally admit she’s burning out and needs a vacation or a temporary stay in one of the mission rooms as a desk ninja to fix it. What he’s not expecting is for her to swear she’s not crazy and lead him to her room to show him what in his opinion does look like the ravings of a lunatic. A lunatic who knows S-ranked secrets regarding Uzumaki. Shikaku already knows this is going to be a pain in his ass. 

Headaches and visions and things she shouldn’t know. Of course his might-as-well-be-daughter would be the one to present him with this mess. Her life is just That Way. Which means his has to be too by guilt of association. 

He takes her to Inoichi and secretly hopes it’s just some kind of genjutsu. Less paperwork, less alarms to sound and less trouble for him and Katsumi. A nice quick fix. Of course that’s not what he gets though. 

Katsumi is apparently reincarnated. Something that wouldn’t matter normally. Except she got reincarnated with memories of things that have already happened and knowledge of things that will happen. To top it all off, she’s only remembering bits and pieces so far but that’s going to change apparently and no medicine on earth can stop the headaches so he can’t even help her there. 

Shikaku knew daughters could be troublesome, but no one warned him of the full extent of the mayhem one can cause. She’s now the biggest asset Konoha has and Tsunade wants to form an entire division of ANBU strictly for dealing with the problems that Katsumi’s knowledge is informing them of. 

He loves the girl, but she’s created a mountain of paper work for him. Troublesome child. 


	26. A Discussion of Masks

Kakashi is fuming. There’s ANBU following his pup. If they’re scouting her, he’s going to throw them into a wall. She’s not even fourteen yet, has only been a Chuunin for a few months. She’s too young, too inexperienced, too small, too unbroken. She doesn’t belong in the shadow corps. They’ll warp her into someone she won’t recognize. Destroy all the good parts of his pup and call it improvement. 

He jumps through the window to the Hokage’s office without a word and stares at Lady Tsunade, trying to keep his killing Intent in check. He doesn’t want her guards to think he’s going to kill her. 

“Yo. There’s ANBU following my student.” 

Tsunade looking deeply unimpressed with him, “I’m aware, Hatake. What of it?”

“She’s too young to get scouted for the ANBU. Katsumi doesn’t belong in a mask.”

“You were about her age when you joined, Hatake. A bit hypocritical to say she’s too young to even be scouted, wouldn’t you say?”

“She’s not ready for it now. She’s got a long way to go before she can even begin to handle it.” Kakashi pushes, determined to find an argument that will work to stop the scouting. 

“She can be taught. You know her skill set. With a bit more work she’d be an excellent addition.” Tsunade flips through another file while drinking a bottle of sake. Where is Shizune when he needs her? That woman would be able to help talk some sense into Tsunade. 

“Her jutsu repertoire is small, we’re still expanding it. It’s not suited to ANBU yet.”

“Not for the division you were in maybe. She’s not being considered for those missions however.”

Kakashi feels a sliver of unease work it’s way down his spine, “what division is she being considered for?”

“Oinin Butai is interested in her, specifically. She has the temperament for it, hates traitors, hellbent on completing a mission, no qualms about killing. Her skill set would work well there too. Her mother certainly thrived with them.”

Kakashi stares in disbelief at the Hokage. She wants his pup to be an Undertaker. To hunt down and slaughter the idiots who betray the village. 

“Ishihara Hana thrived there until the day it killed her. Katsumi isn’t her mother. She’s in therapy after her first assassination. She won’t be able to handle it, it _will_ break her.”

Tsunade leans back and shrugs slightly, “She’s within acceptable boundaries. Give her some credit, Hatake, she’s stronger than you think. And the jutsu she used for the Assassination caught a lot of ANBU’s attention. The wet works squad is also interested in her.”

“What jutsu?” He knows he hasn’t taught her any assassination techniques. 

“It’s an Ishihara clan technique, apparently. Reverses blood flow with a heart attack or aneurysm being the result. According to Shiranui, she’d never even tried it before and managed it on her first attempt. She’s been damn near moulded for the ANBU by her father. And by you, if you want the honest truth.”

Kakashi laughs harshly at that. He knows he never trained her for ANBU. “I never did anything to prepare her for ANBU.”

“Whether you realized it or not, your training has helped shape her for a future in ANBU. There’s nothing you can do about it, Hatake. It’s her decision ultimately.”

Kakashi grits his teeth. He can’t have his pup disappear behind a mask. “If she joins ANBU, I want my mask back.

If his pup has to wear a mask, he has no qualms about following her into the shadows. It’s a world he’s intimately familiar with. She’ll need someone there to help her find her footing.

Tsunade stares at him hard, weighing his words. Finally, she nods, “Very well, you get your mask back the day she gets hers.”

Kakashi feels like he’s just made a deal with the Shinigami. He doesn’t mind it though. It’s his pup he’s doing it for. The only member of his pack left. He won’t loose another teammate. Not even to the village.


	27. Cut and Run

Satoshi gets the orders to get out of Ame nearly a year into his mission there. He’s managed to establish himself as a civilian barkeep at a shinobi tavern there, hiding his teeth by wearing a breathing mask the Ame shinobi favor, with the excuse that he has lung problems and needs it to breath better. No one questions it really. There are plenty that need them to breathe here, since gaseous poison was used by Hanzō for so long. He’s old enough now to fall into the category of people who could have suffered from his poison as a child. 

People don’t always seem to understand infiltration. They think it’s about working up the ladder to a position of power and getting into all the classified information. Sometimes it is, but deep undercover like that requires years and years of dedication to it, of building a fake life and committing to it utterly until the day you don’t anymore. Satoshi never cared to specialize in that type of infiltration. It’s too easy to forget it’s a mission in the end. Too easy to turn traitor simply by letting the cover become reality. 

People underestimate how much information drunk Shinobi spill out over a bottle of sake. Even the most useless of information is worth something. Satoshi’s hearing makes it easy as anything to listen to every conversation in the building. Makes it easy to put pieces together over time. It’s even better when the shinobi figure out he’s a good listener who doesn’t gossip about them to others. There’s plenty of shinobi that will happily sit at the bar and bemoan the state of the affairs in their life to him. Tell him about missions that went bad or superiors they hate or new jutsu they mastered or how their genin team is terrible and their wife cheated. 

He listens to everything. Picks out the important bits, who the superiors are, what missions Ame is involved in, what types of jutsu they use. Names and faces and skills and relationships are all written in code to be filed away for later. 

He keeps an ear out for certain things though. For mentions of the Paper Angel, and God, and how letting the rain touch your skin tells God where you are. Listens to the way Ame shinobi speak in reverent, fearful tones about him and the angel. 

There’s no mention of Hanzō. No mention of anyone linked to him either. Satoshi suspects God decided they weren’t welcome here. Satoshi wonders about the man they call a God. It sounds like he must be Kage level if the shinobi are all so convinced of his strength. 

He hates being in Ame, but he gnashes his teeth at the order to abandon the mission. He’s just managed to fully integrate himself with the shinobi patrons. Just starting to pull the truth out of the rumors and he’s loathe to stop now. He may not have wanted this mission, but he’s on it now and it feels like failure to fall back. 

It also leaves him with a problem. Getting out is one of the hardest parts of infiltration. People notice when a person disappears. Especially in a shinobi village. He has to work his way out carefully, has to make sure no red flags are raised as he prepares to leave. That means an explanation that’s believable for his leaving. It means making sure he leaves as calmly as he arrived. Looking like he’s rushing is going to get him killed. It doesn’t help that to leave he has two options. Sneak out and hope no one catches him, or waltz by the Gate guards and have to give them a verifiable explanation for leaving. Ame has more regulations about coming and going than any village he’s seen for civilians. 

Satoshi sits against the wall in the shitty apartment he rented under his false name and closes his eyes. What a pointless mission. Nothing to be done for it now though. He needs to plan. 


	28. Being a Sensei Isn’t Easy

Kakashi can’t pinpoint the exact moment his genin went from being the kids he’s reluctantly training to his pups. He thinks it must have been somewhere between Katsumi demanding, with teeth bared and green eyes acidic and furious, that he teach them properly or find someone who will— She’d said it like an order and a challenge and a plea all rolled into one— and seeing Sasuke’s seemingly dead body on that bridge and Katsumi held up by the scruff by a nukenin. Somewhere between those moments his genin became his pups. Maybe it was a culmination of things. Of Katsumi demanding he teach them, of walking Naruto and Katsumi through the aftermath of their first kills, of thinking he’d failed another person when he though Sasuke was dead. Somewhere in there, they stopped being little more than unwanted responsibilities and reminders of past failures. 

He’s proud of them. Their progress as a team and as individuals come in leaps and bounds. There’s no clear leader among the three. Each falling into that role as necessary, depending on the situation. His pups move together like they’d grown up doing it. They walk shoulder to shoulder in the streets of Konoha, their strides perfectly in sync. Watching them makes him think that for once in his life, he’s making something worthwhile instead of destroying it. 

He can picture them older and more experienced. A little less innocent and a few more jagged edges, but still shoulder to shoulder, with all the confidence and strength to stand against anything. The kind of team that exemplifies the teamwork Konoha puts so much weight on. It’s a future he hopes he gets to witness. 

He’s not prepared for the Chuunin exams to destroy that. Not prepared for his angry little Uchiha pup to get a fucking curse mark on his neck or for him to flip his actual shit over loosing against Yamato’s apprentice. He’s not prepared for the sudden and violent withdrawal from his other pups. He’s also not prepared for Jiraiya to finally swing back into Konoha and remember he has a godson. He’s known Jiraiya would eventually want to train Naruto, but he wasn’t expecting it to be anytime soon. At least his little Kunoichi pup isn’t throwing any surprises at him. Such a steady little thing that one can be. 

He’s even more unprepared when he gets back after a mission nearly two months after the Chuunin exams and Invasion to learn Sasuke’s fucked off to Oto. That his other pups and Haruno and the Nara brat and a handful of genin are the only ones sent to give chase. 

Gai goes with him to chase them down. They left over a day ago and haven’t come back yet. There’s dread pooling in his stomach. The medics follow behind them, in case someone needs help. Kakashi resolutely doesn’t think about the body scrolls field medics carry with them in case their patients don’t make it. 

What they find first nearly makes his heart stop in his chest. Gai’s student is on the ground with a massive arrow through his shoulder and another hole through his midsection. Kakashi hardly glances at him though, Gai is here for him. He focuses on a tree surrounded by the broken remnants of a mokuton shield. One of Asuma’s students is slumped by the opening and Kakashi can’t tell where he’s injured. What’s behind him though, makes a broken noise escape Kakashi’s throat as he approaches. Katsumi is half dangling and half kneeling above the boy and he’s certain she’s dead. Her right side is soaked in blood, her hitai-ate is gone and there’s an arrow pinning her to the tree. Her head is bowed forward and her eyes are half closed and Kakashi thinks he’s going to be sick at the sight. Another person he’s failed to save. They need to confirm she’s gone though and he doesn’t want anyone else touching his student. He’ll handle the body scroll personally. Fuck, he’ll carve her name into the memorial stone himself. She deserves at least that much from him. 

He checks the pulse of the boy first, Delays the inevitable. He finds the boy’s pulse is there. Weak and hardly noticeable but there. Kakashi is torn between resentment towards Asuma who may well get a living student back and fragile, fragile hope that his pup’s pulse will be there too. He hesitates only a moment before placing two fingers against the artery in her throat. Holds his breath as he waits. There. Weak and erratic and still beating. Not dead. Not dead. He manages to croak out a call for the medics. There’s two lives here to be saved. 

Inuzuka and his Ninken partner are found next, both In bad but not yet critical conditions. Four left to find. Yamato’s apprentice, the Nara kid, and his remaining pups. 

Finding them is easier. The Suna team has arrived and are just finishing helping a manic looking Nara and what looks like Gai’s should-be-hospitized mini-me deal with the last Oto nin. He doesn’t pause there, they clearly have it handled. 

He arrives at the tail end of the fight. Naruto looks wrecked and Haruno looks wrecked, they’ll probably need a hospital stay too, but both look better than Sasuke. Kakashi is mildly curious about what the hell happened to the kid’s left eye. It’s gone. Looks torn to bits, even the eyelid is shredded by claw marks that stretch from his left temple to the bridge of his nose. He considers it and realizes distantly that’s the claw marks are about the width of Katsumi’s hand. He can’t find it in him to feel bad for the Uchiha. Not after seeing his smallest pup doing an impression of a corpse. 

In the end, there’s not much for him to do. Sasuke falls into Chakra exhaustion within a few minutes of Kakashi’s arrival and it’s easier enough to throw him over Bull’s back and use ninja wire to tie his hands together. Haruno is conscious, so she gets a piggyback ride, Naruto should be happy he’s out cold, Kakashi knows the kid would be embarrassed to know he’s being carried like a baby. 

Months later, he visits the Uchiha in the psych ward for the first and only time. Sasuke was one of his pups, and maybe one day, there will be a possibility of him being that again, but not now. Not anytime soon. He visits only to check his progress for himself. It goes badly. 

Sasuke has chakra suppressant seals on his wrists as they sit across from each other in silence. He looks angrier than ever. Apparently, the Yamanaka’s are struggling get through to him while the curse mark is in play.

“Maa, Sasuke, no need to look so angry. How have you been?”

“As if you care, old man. We all know I was your least favorite.” He bares his teeth in a way reminiscent of Katsumi. It’s not near as threatening coming from him, though. 

“Of course that’s not true, Sasuke. You all annoyed me equally.”

“You hated me then. You still do. I heard Ishihara nearly died, you know. You can’t honestly say you don’t hate me after that.”

“Katsumi’s doing wonderfully lately, thank you for asking. She really impressed a noble family she escorted. And she’s in the bingo book now. You should be proud of your former teammate, Sasuke.” Kakashi eye smiles at him. 

“Please, you only say that because you wanna fuck her, right? Fucking pervert. Probably thrilled to be all alone with her now.” Sasuke’s one remaining eye is filled with malice.

Kakashi doesn’t so much as blink at the accusations. They’re utterly baseless and if the brat wasn’t in a psych holding cell with cameras on him at all times, he’d punt the disrespectful whelp. Instead he eye smiles and pats Sasuke’s head before walking out without a word. 

Kakashi believes in never abandoning comrades and he hasn’t. Naruto is traveling with Jiraiya and Katsumi is in the village soaking up training like a sponge. His pups are going to be fine and Kakashi has more important things to worry about than lost causes. He thinks it’s about time to have Katsumi sign the Hatake summoning contract, she could use a partner. 


	29. Slightly Darker Kakashi AU: Of Pack and Possession

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is just an AU of the main story! It’s not canon for the story! It’s got darker, slightly more predatory undertones but nothing explicit! I REPEAT THIS IS NOT PART OF THE ACTUAL FIC

Kakashi bares his teeth as a furious and feral thrill goes through him. The little brat tried to blow him up. Had instigated a chase after gleefully trying to cut open his femoral artery and then tried to blow him up. He very much appreciates the pure violence the girl exudes. Such a rarity in genin, in anyone not in ANBU really. It makes him want to push her until she snaps. See how far he can take it before she breaks and lashes out. 

Of course, he can’t do that. He has two other brats to deal with too, and the test isn’t over yet. Of course, if they fail, he could keep her as an apprentice. Send the boys off to someone else, Council be damned. They pass, the first team ever to do so. Kakashi can’t decide if he’s disappointed or not. He gets to train Minato’s son and the little Kiri bred girl, but he’s now responsible for three twelve year olds that all have issues. Loud and idiotic Naruto, arrogant and furious Sasuke, and feral, unyielding Katsumi. 

If he were honest he’d expected to see the ghosts of his team seven whenever he looks at them. He probably would have too, if Katsumi wasn’t who she is. Rin and Katsumi are nothing alike really. It’s impossible to look at the Ishihara girl and see his lost teammate in her place. Her eyes are too hard, too serious, her temper too mercurial. Rin would never have bared her teeth at the world the way Katsumi does. 

That mission to Wave Country solidifies that opinion. Seeing the girl use poisoned blades to bleed a man dry without a moment’s hesitation makes him think that she’s closer to being a younger Kakashi than anyone else. All she needs is a dead father and an obsession with rules and it’d probably be like looking at a young female version of himself. Watching her practically dance on the rough waves of the ocean is a strange dichotomy to watching her kill. It reminds him harshly that she’s still just a peace time child. Barely out of the academy. Kakashi forces down the feral desire to take her hunting with him. Reminds himself that she shouldn’t wear a mask, that it’s better for her if she never goes on the missions he takes. 

Learning Zabuza takes a shine to her, that he taught her his hiding in the mist technique and challenged her to earn the broadsword he carries, makes Kakashi seriously considered trying to shove another Chidori through the man’s chest. Especially after watching him get to slaughter Gato’s thugs with her. That’s his fucking student, his fucking pup. His pack. Zabuza has no right to behave like he has a claim to her. Kiri blood be damned. 

Kakashi is viscerally pleased when they fight beside each other during the invasion. She works with him like she was born doing it and Kakashi is thrilled by it. The feral pride only intensifies when he learns how well she fought during the rest of the invasion after he sent her away. No one in the village will underestimate her now. If only there weren’t people muttering about how she’s too feral. He very reluctantly sends her to Tsume to learn a bit of self restraint. He personally prefers her wild. It’s much more entertaining. Seeing her get promoted though assuages the annoyance at having to teach her to curb her instincts. The flak jacket suits her well. 

Sasuke’s defection is unexpected but not truly surprising. The Uchiha has been pulling away from everyone and getting angrier and angrier after getting the curse mark. Unfortunate but so be it. Can’t help someone who doesn’t want it. 

Kakashi is pissed though at the states his other two come back in. Minato’s son is mainly suffering from chakra exhaustion, the Kyuubi taking care of everything else. His Ishihara pup is another matter entirely. She looks dead. Stuck to a motherfucking tree and bleeding out and he can see the shaking of her hands even in unconsciousness that are the first symptoms of a soldier pill overdose. He’d kill Sasuke if he could get away with it. Fucking traitorous brat nearly got his own teammates killed. Kakashi finds solace in seeing the destroyed eye Sasuke has, courtesy of Katsumi. He’s going to buy her some new poisons for that one. She’s earned it. 

Sasuke ends up in a psych cell and Naruto leaves with Jiraiya. Kakashi is pleased when Katsumi agrees to be his apprentice though. He gets to pour every drop of skill he has into her now. Doesn’t have to split his attention between three kids. Doesn’t have to see Minato in Naruto’s place more often than he cares to admit. Doesn’t have to see the images of himself and Obito superimposed over the boys when they bicker. Katsumi alone doesn’t bring forth the ghosts of his past. It’s something that makes him more than happy to focus on her. As if he wasn’t already focusing on her more than the others.

  
He takes her on C-ranks and low B-ranks, reveling in working them with her. Reveling in having her match him step for step in fights. Needs his help less and less to hold her own. Tracking with her is just as pleasing. She grins ferally, all razor sharp teeth and bloodstained mouth whenever they find their prey. Having her sign the Hatake summoning contract feels like an inevitability, like there is no one else he’d ever consider allowing to do so. She’s the only one with the right to it. The only one he’s certain he won’t break.

Shikaku notices the growing interest first. Gives him warning looks and reminds him he’s her Sensei. Gives subtle threats of psych evaluations and being barred from missions if he forgets it. Kakashi doesn’t need the warnings, he’s capable of behaving. He thinks if Satoshi were around, he’d have more to worry about, but the man practically abandoned his kid, abandoned his pack. He doesn’t get a say anymore.

She joins ANBU and he returns with her. She’s his pack after all. He’s not going to just let her go slinking into the shadows alone. He did well there, with the right guidance, she’ll thrive there too. Seeing her in the Fox mask is viscerally, brutally, Basely exciting. Here she’s not his student. She’s just his comrade. He’s not here to teach her. Any missions they go on, they’ll go on as equals. They’ll be hunting like real pack mates. He’s a squad captain again, working in the special ops division and the assassination ops division at once. He already knows when it’s time to bid on her, he’ll be staking claim. He already knows they work well together and he’s loathe to let anyone else have her. He isn’t sure when protectiveness became possessiveness, but it has. He trained her, he knows her best. She’s his. 

Pakkun snorts and reminds him she’s still a pup. The mask doesn’t change that. Kakashi is well aware of that. He knows the boundaries. Isn’t going to cross them. Considering doing so leaves him feeling gross. She’s still pup and still student. Even though as Fox she’s an equal. He’s patient though. Knows eventually she won’t be student and won’t be pup. She’s already his pack. In time her role in the pack will change on its own. No need to push it. Feral, unyielding, loyal Katsumi is already his after all. Has been since she tried to blow him up. He can wait a few more years until she realizes it. There’s no rush. 


	30. Life Plans and Long Games

Shikamaru can identify the exact moment he knew he was never going to be free of the trouble that Ishihara Katsumi brings with her like a tsunami everywhere she goes. Bringing her home with him after she got them detention on the first day of the academy was clearly the moment he’d been checkmated without realizing it at the time. Beaten four moves in. And only years later does he realize it. 

Her steadily growing presence in his life from then on is something he just accepted, the same way he accepted everything else. Sure, she’s trouble, but she likes shogi and she’s happy to nap while he cloud watches and even in the academy she was unwavering with her loyalty. It’s something he’s able to appreciate, the Ino-Shika-cho team formation expects loyalty like that too. It’s easy, then to convince his parents to open their home to her when her father is away. Okaa-San was already pushing for it, his added pressure was more than enough to do it. As loyal a friend as she is, it’s only right he returns that loyalty. 

Shikamaru moves slowly, speaks slowly, wakes slowly. He thinks quickly though, feels quickly, understands things quickly. It takes only a few months for him to decide she’s his. His friend and future comrade and favorite Shogi opponent and the only person he lets sleep in his bed. Takes the span of watching her cry in detention when he got upset with her, for him to feel like protecting her was his responsibility, even as they grew older and it became more than clear she didn’t need protection. 

In the Chuunin exams he’d hardly thought before giving her the answer in the first portion. Had contemplated murder when he saw the Oto nin aiming to kill her. Had threatened one with death in their spar while every jounin sensei bore witness. Taken her pound of flesh for her when he left a black and purple handprint around the idiot’s throat. Was rewarded for it by her with a sharp toothed smile that was all dark pleasure and vicious pride. Fighting her in the final round was as entertaining as a shogi match with her. She’d done her best to keep him moving. To not let him think. She forgot he thinks fast even if he prefers to moves slow. Winning against her is a sweeter victory than he expected it to be. But then, she always makes their games interesting. It’s why he keeps playing against her. 

Loosing track of her during the invasion would be more concerning if he wasn’t holding five Oto nin in place and waiting for his chakra to run dry. Knowing her, she’s running around cackling and swinging her swords around under her Sensei’s watchful eye. His predicament gives him plenty of time to contemplate things, of course. This really isn’t the way he wanted to go. All he wanted was an easy life and an early retirement and a wife that Katsumi won’t hate on sight and a couple of kids, one that would continue the Ino-Shika-cho trio, and the other that would probably end up on a Genin team led by Katsumi because she’d jump on the chance to turn his kid into a trouble magnet. Then he wanted to die peacefully, ideally outlived by both his wife and Katsumi. Instead he’s in the fucking forest holding five Oto nin at bay and waiting to die. Really forces him to reconsider some of his life plans in case he actually makes it out of this. 

Decides he’ll probably skip the wife altogether, it would be too difficult to find someone his mother and his father and Katsumi approve of. Someone who wouldn’t mind having her around the house because she’s spent so long living with them periodically it’s weird when she’s not there. He can always just name a cousin’s kid as the clan heir. Of course, then he’d have to justify to Katsumi why he is never having kids and He thinks she’d go straight to Yoshino worrying he’s lost his mind, considering he’s told her his life plan before. Which, fair. That’s a bit too drastic of a life plan change to be made in the middle of an invasion. 

So while he holds the Oto nin and feels his chakra draining away, he comes to the realization, years after the fact, that Katsumi already won. That she’d put him in checkmate in their first meeting and ever since then every major action he’s taken has been made with the thought of how will this affect her. Well. Shit. He smiles ruefully up at the sky. Of course that’s the answer. That makes the life planning much, much simpler. Now he’s just gotta live long enough to start working on said plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I wasn’t expecting the feedback I got from the Kakashi AU I posted, so the current official Katsumi ship options are Kakashi, Shikamaru, Naruto, and potentially Sai when he’s introduced. So comment below if you like any of those options! And as always thank you for reading!!


	31. Sound Logic

Hyena has been in ANBU long enough to recognize when a mission is vital. When failure is absolutely not an option. This mission is one of those. The Akatsuki have been identified as an SSS-ranked threat to the village. Cutting down two of their members is necessary to deal with the threat. He doesn’t need to know anything else to understand the importance of the mission. Stag has been his Taichou before. Hyena knows the man makes sound decisions and Owl is proven to be good too. Fun to mess with too when they’re not on a mission. Hyuugas are so easy to rile up. 

Fox is a different story. Little, rookie ANBU with a cursed mask. He’s heard stories about the last Fox. Another Kunoichi who was part of the Oinin-Butai. Never lost a mark apparently. This isn’t her though. That Fox died badly. Died in pieces. A week before the Kyuubi attack. ANBU has its superstitions. Fox’s nasty death was considered the harbinger after that. The Fox mask kept out of circulation for fourteen years due to no one being willing to touch it. Until now. Hyena likes new Fox, even if he’s uneasy about having a cursed mask on his team. New Fox is mean. Is fun to fight. Cunning and doesn’t know when to quit. Hyena hopes New Fox lasts. Too bad her first mission is killing two Akatsuki members. That’s not conducive to a long life. 

The mission goes not terribly but not perfectly. Stag is dead, but so are the targets. Owl got poisoned but he’ll be fine. New Fox got fucked up, but Hyena is pleased to see she won’t die. He’ll still get to play with her. It’d be a shame if New Fox got killed so quick. She’s too entertaining for him to be alright with that. 

Admittedly, Throwing her at Blondie’s clay explosives bird probably wasn’t the best strategy but it’s the first thing he thought of. She’s certainly light enough to throw a long way and she didn’t die. So it worked. Plus she killed Blondie. Clearly it was a sound strategy, even if Stag had yelled at him mid fight for doing it. Shame Stag is dead now. Hyena would have loved to rub the success of that last ditch plan to not let Blondie make space for his explosions in Stag’s face. 

Of course, Hyena had to catch her when she fell out of the sky. But it’s fine. She lived, and he fixed the arm he dislocated. No harm done and mission accomplished. 

Hyena can make it up to New Fox later. He’ll loot a new Wakizashi off a target later or something. Since hers is in the river now. New Fox would probably laugh. He hasn’t gotten New Fox to laugh yet and he has to work fast or she’ll end up as stiff as Owl. No fun at all then.


	32. Dog’s Eye View

Taishiro likes his summoner. A lot. She’s his. His first summoner and he thinks she’s the best summoner. Clearly. He sleeps in her bed and eats food from her plate and she trusts him to fight beside her. He definitely has the best summoner. Pakkun can chew his own tail. 

Her little pack is funny though. The Sire and Dam aren’t hers, but they act like she is. Only one other pup too, instead of a full litter. Pakkun says that’s normal, but Taishiro thinks it’s weird that humans have so few pups. Don’t they know pups are vital for a pack? 

Other pup is clearly future alpha. His Sire is pack alpha in the den. Lazy baby alpha, though. Taishiro worries at that. Alphas have to be active enough to deal with all problems. Naps are only for afterwards. Not all the time. It’s why Taishiro is content not being alpha. 

Katsumi likes the other pup though. They share a den and play together and clearly get along. Taishiro will just have to explain to baby alpha where he’s falling short so he’ll be good alpha when he’s big. He’ll have to hurry though. Baby alpha is already smelling like Growing. 

Real Alpha, Hunting Alpha is also good. Baby alpha should learn from him. Good at taking care of pack mates on hunts. Makes sure order is kept too. No laziness until after hunt. Not Katsumi’s Sire either. Taishiro thinks he smells like old grief, but Katsumi doesn’t notice so he doesn’t mention it. Hunting Alpha teaches Katsumi how to be proper hunting mate. Pakkun and the others all love him. Taishiro thinks she’s still the best though. Not so old. More hunting years left. Much better for cuddling too. 

Katsumi gets sad sometimes though. Twitches and cries out in her sleep. Taishiro doesn’t like that. Does his best to help her settle. Baby alpha does too. It raises his opinion of the lazy pup a bit. At least Taishiro won’t have to explain how to care for pack members to him. 

He’s confused on where Katsumi’s Sire is. Her Dam is hunting in the Pure Lands now. He knows that. Maybe that’s why she lives with this pack. Needed new dam to raise her. Happens sometimes with dogs. No Dam means no milk and no milk means starving puppies. Still doesn’t know why her Sire isn’t around though. Katsumi just says he’s on a long hunt. Taishiro thinks it’s a bit long for one hunt though. Maybe Sire isn’t a good hunter so he’s taking forever. 

Taishiro likes other female pups too. Pink pup is fun to practice hunting with. He thinks she’ll be a good hunting partner for his summoner. Blonde pup is smells like flowers and gives good belly rubs. Doesn’t know how she hunts, but not all pack members are good hunters. Maybe she’s like that. 

Then there’s Biggest Alpha that everyone listens to. Taishiro doesn’t like her. Loud and smells like alcohol and makes Katsumi work with rude Mask people. He wants to bite her. Even if Katsumi says no. One day he will. It will be worth the trouble. 

Taishiro stretches out on the grass and yawns. Best idea ever signing contract with Katsumi. Even if her pack is confusing. 


	33. Kiri AU: Blood in The Water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Katsumi went with Zabuza and Haku

Katsumi thinks of Konoha and home and safety. Then she thinks of the mist and ocean and freedom. Thinks of secrets it took a nukenin to find out about. Thinks of the offer Haku whispered into her ear while she fought in the mist with the pair. Two days, meet them at midnight by the bridge. It’s a temptation that appeals to the saltwater in her blood and the darkness in her head. An offer and a promise and a dare all in one. 

Katsumi doesn’t know what she’d become if she joins them. Other than a traitor, of course. But their blood calls her the same way the water does. Katsumi has never considered a freedom like what they’re offering until now. Never realized how much of a leash Konoha has her on until it’s pointed out. Suddenly the leash feels choking. 

Sensei doesn’t keep a close enough eye on her. Certain she’s no flight risk. Certain she won’t do something stupid. Doesn’t know about Haku’s offer. It’s not hard to slip away in the night during her watch. Not hard to make it to the bridge and dance on the strong waves as she waits. Her supplies in the bag over one shoulder and her swords strapped across her back. There’s nerves and excitement and a wild anticipation. She doesn’t turn back. 

Zabuza finds her at exactly midnight. Haku smiling softly behind him in the dim moonlight. Zabuza looks her over once, and tells her to come along. She doesn’t hesitate. Falls into step beside Haku as they move, putting as much ground between them and her past as possible. Run over to water to hide their scents. It doesn’t feel wrong at all. It feels a little bit like running towards something instead of away. 

They run for a long time before finally stopping on a coast somewhere she’s never been. Zabuza considers her, dark eyes gleaming, before he pulls a Kunai and draws it across her hitai-ate. Promises her they’ll get her a Kiri one soon enough. Kiri brats don’t wear Konoha headbands. 

They’re traveling all the time. Never in one place longer than it takes to complete a job. Every job is a learning opportunity for her. Haku teaches her herbs and how to treat injuries. Teaches her poisons too, until she can make her own when she finally runs out of the anticoagulant. Helps her improve her skills with senbon needles. Haku is a gentle teacher. 

Zabuza not so much. He’s harsh and demanding but she gets little rewards when she pleases him. New senbon needles or a new whetstone for her swords or mochi when they’re near a village. He spars with her near daily. Pushes her viciously until he’s the only one she can’t beat in a Kenjutsu fight. Teaches her water jutsu after water jutsu. Ruffles her hair and sends her after easy targets by herself as a reward when she masters them. 

It’s easy to forget she was ever anything other than their third teammate. Easy to move on from each kill because they please Zabuza. Easy to let her teeth bare and the dark part of her head rule because it’s encouraged so much. 

She looses track of time. Months pass as they work and travel and she doesn’t think about much else besides what needs to be done that day. Haku keeps track though. Tells her when she asks what day it is. She doesn’t ask often. 

Zabuza tells her what he knows of her clan. Speaks in a rough, harsh voice as he does but she can hear the respect in it. Tells her how they were strong. How they were feral and proud and loyal to a fault. How they worked in pairs. Always pairs. How they were feared for their wildness as much as they were respected for their strength. How they didn’t deserve the ending they got. He tells her about their skills with swords. Calls her  _ sea wolf _ with dark approval whenever she does something that reminds him of what she is. 

She meets Mei for the first time a year after joining them. The woman is beautiful and her teeth aren’t sharp but she smiles like they are. Smiles like a threat. The way Zabuza does. The way Haku does. The way Katsumi has learned to smile. She pets Katsumi’s hair and hears her name and checks her teeth and says _Welcome home_.  Tells her when they take Kiri back, she’ll have the compound of her ancestors again. Every scroll and heirloom they left behind will be hers again. Promises her blood for blood. Promises she’ll get justice for the clan she never got to know. Promises her fights and blood in the water and a home she’ll never have to fear loosing. Katsumi likes Mei. 

Mei teaches her how to make dangerous look soft. How to make pretty lethal. She teaches it better than the Academy did. Katsumi learns from her how to make a man think she’s utterly harmless even with a sword at his neck. Useful beauty is how Mei phrases it. 

Katsumi starts trying to wield Kubikiribōchō not long before the civil war for Kiri begins again. It’s heavy and She struggles terribly with it. Zabuza doesn’t laugh at her though. Just tells her she’s not ready yet and shows her how to care for the sword in the meantime. Explains the sword regenerates using the iron in the blood of the people it cuts down. Shows her how to take it apart to carry easier and indulges her more violent attempts to win it from him. Laughing darkly every time she says fuck it and tries to remove his arms so he has to let her have it. 

Haku treats her injuries after every one of those instances. Haku is her favorite. His gentleness even in a fight is fascinating to her. He hates killing, according to Zabuza, but he’s good at it. Katsumi doesn’t understand anymore how someone can dislike what they’re good at. She’s good at killing. Good at fighting. It’s been a long time since she’s been ashamed of it. 

When it’s time to take back Kiri, Katsumi is at the front of the line for the fight. Right beside her people. 


	34. Older generation AU: Planting Seeds In A Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Katsumi was Satoshi’s twin

In one world, Ishihara Katsumi is born in peacetime to a mother that dies when she’s an infant and an absentee father in a Konoha hospital. In another she’s born in Kiri, only a few years before the death of her clan. She has a father and a mother and an older brother and a twin brother. By the time she leaves Kiri, she’ll only have a mother and twin brother. Her only memory of the clan will be blood and screams and death. 

She grows up knowing she has to prove herself to earn half the respect a Konoha native is inherently afforded. Grows up in the aftermath of one war and the shadow of the next. Grows up with only Satoshi, her twin, as the only friend she has. It’s fine though, kaa-San bares her teeth and tells them Ishiharas are as adaptable as water and Two makes them a clan. So it’s fine. Katsumi and Satoshi have everyone they need. Kaa-San teaches them strength, the kind she claims Konoha shinobi lack. The kind only an Ishihara can truly possess. Teaches them with steel and water and blood all the ways they’re dangerous. Kaa-San dies before she can teach them her final lesson: restraint.

In this life, Namikaze Minato is not a legend yet. He’s just another shinobi even if he is a prodigy. In this life, Hatake Sakumo still commits suicide but when he lived, he and kaa-San were something close to friends. It’s easy enough for that to extend to the children. Katsumi and Satoshi and Kakashi. The unwanted, untrusted Kiri bred brats and the son of a disgraced man. The twins aren’t quite friends with Hatake, but they’re closer to him than any of the children in their age group. It doesn’t matter that he’s younger than them. 

In this life, Satoshi and Katsumi are chuunins when the war finally starts and Jounin when it ends. Are right on the front lines cutting down Iwa and Kumo and Kiri (especially Kiri, they owe that village a terrible, bloody debt, after all) with all the ferocity their mother taught them and none of the mercy Konoha tried to instill. Katsumi isn’t there for the Kanabi bridge or for the Nohara incident. She sees the aftermath though. Hatake broken in ways children aren’t supposed to be broken. Satoshi and Katsumi try to help, but ultimately they’re pushed away. Kiri killed Hatake’s teammate and they’re Kiri even if they wear Konoha Hitai-ates. They watch as a long friendship ebbs away. 

In this world, Satoshi never specializes in infiltration. With Katsumi, the pair become the type of frontline fighters that no one wants to face. They’re a unit. Where one goes, the other follows. Assassinations and recovery missions and anything with enough combat to sate the bloodlust their mother never taught them to control. 

They earn a place in the bingo book. Kill on sight if it’s only one of them. Flee on sight if they’re together. A-ranked threats apart and S-ranked together. The Bloody twins is their moniker and Katsumi and Satoshi drink to that when they see it. 

Wolf and Panther join ANBU together. It’s where Wolf meets Fox (because in this life, Satoshi wasn’t there to spar with Hana for the first time as genin) and Panther watches with wary eyes as the woman becomes a fixture in her brother’s life. 

Katsumi doesn’t fall in love behind a mask. Isn’t sure she falls in love at all. Just one day she wakes up and her brother is married and she’s in Shiranui Genma’s bed for the tenth day in a row and life is good. Not great but good. Genma is the steadiest presence in her life. Steady in the way the earth is steady. Satoshi May be her twin, but he is steady in the way an ocean storm is. The war is over and Katsumi doesn’t understand how to live in the world with no constant battle. Genma is the only peace she has. The only one she understands anyway because they both have masks though they didn’t meet that way and it’s a peace that comes with the knowledge they could kill each other as easily as kiss. 

Satoshi has a daughter with a different name and Fox still dies, but this time there’s still three Ishihara in the world. There’s still clan, because Katsumi won’t let Satoshi pretend otherwise. There’s no marriage between Genma and Katsumi, neither want a marriage, and there’s no real discussion or thought behind adding Raidou to the mix. Three in a bed is a tighter squeeze but they like it that way. There’s a son, eventually, an accident but he has her teeth and Raidou’s eyes and he grows up mimicking Genma’s disposition, though with a bit more bite. He carries her name. The boys don’t care, her clan comes in pairs after all. Satoshi’s daughter is just a few years older than her son, and they’re raised as siblings more than cousins. Satoshi fades into Wolf more and more even as Panther fades away until she’s semi retired from ANBU and teaching the new Ishihara children to be Ishihara. 

She takes a genin team when her son starts the Academy. An Inuzuka and a pair of civilians. She teaches them everything she knows. Her own genin team, sensei included, died in the war and Kyuubi attack. All but her. She makes them a few promises, the same ones her Sensei once gave her team. She promises they will outlive her, one way or another. Promises to make them strong. Promises too that they’ll hate her now, but one day they’ll be grateful for her lessons. Unlike her Sensei, She keeps all of these promises. 

In one world, she’s born to make large changes suddenly. In this world, she makes small changes, slowly over time, the way water wears away a rock. She doesn’t live to grow old and see the next generation win their battles and fix the mistakes of the past, but that’s okay. In this world, her son and her niece and her genin are stronger, are better equipped for it anyway. 

In this world, she’s not a hero, not even a main character, really, but she’s still vital, she leaves the Ishihara children with their history and pride and the strength of a thousand bloody generations before them, and leaves her genin team with spines of steel and wild hearts. She leaves behind a future she’s not afraid of her people facing without her.


	35. Out Of My Hands

Genma has known Ishihara Katsumi her whole life. He’d taken care of her more than anyone else for the first few years of her life after Hana’s death while Satoshi was on missions, with the exception of Anko who used to hoard the baby time like it was gold. He’s seen how much potential the girl has. Had helped her develop it himself. Had taught her stealth until she could match his. Had made sure her aim was flawless. Had done his best to impart a sense of calmness into the girl. A level head is important. She displays it most of the time. At least from what he witnesses. 

He’s known she’s been on ANBU’s radar since her Chuunin exams. Contrary to popular belief, ANBU doesn’t make killers, it refines them. Takes the killers and the ones with too much fight in them, the ones who are better suited to wartime, and puts them to use. She’s a diamond in the rough in their eyes. He should know. He’s on one of the wet works squads. He knows exactly what they look for in a candidate. 

It’s why he requested her for the dual mission. Orders to test her and see if she would be worth cultivating. She does well. Too well. Whatever weird Assassination jutsu she used, it’s almost assured to earn her an offer. Hatake may try and kill him for this later, but he can’t lie and say she did badly. Her report will tell the truth even if his doesn’t.

When he sees Fox for the first time, getting healed in the medic room, he doesn’t need anyone to tell him who it is. Small and clearly a Kunoichi. Definitely Ishihara Katsumi. He doesn’t say anything though. He has no idea what she was doing, he knows she hasn’t been assigned a squad yet. But it’s clear she’s in use. Genma tries not to think what that implies. He was fresh into ANBU when Root was disbanded. There can’t be another one of those being made. Hatake will kill him if his report got her thrown into something like that. He might let him if he got her thrown into a Root 2.0. 

Genma chews his senbon as he considers the development. He has some digging to do. Needs to see if Hatake is going to have a reason to slaughter him or not. Man is stupidly protective of his last student. 


	36. What A Drag

Shikamaru is going to go into the woods and become one with the damn deer. Since clearly he’ll never be able to walk into a room and see Katsumi without feeling embarrassed now. Of all the conversations he was expecting that was not it. And here he thought Taishiro was starting to learn discretion. Even if Chinami definitely didn’t understand the concept. 

Shikamaru took the diplomatic job because it was easy. Just show Temari around and show her a good time and keep an eye on her. Easy. No stress, no problems. Easy, in village mission. A nice reprieve from the missions he’s been on recently. 

Somehow, he forgot that Katsumi is territorial and having someone who helped invade the village around might go over badly. Especially with how much stress she’s been under with missions and training and the ANBU tattoo he’s pointedly not asking about that he saw by accident and her MIA tou-San. Really should have predicted Katsumi’s immediate standoffishness. Temari had wanted a rematch with her though and he’d have to bring her around the compound anyway. So he figured might as well get both over with. Should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. 

He’s known he’s had a thing for Katsumi for awhile. It’s nothing new. He’s been good about not mentioning it though. She’s too busy to be worrying about it and he doesn’t want to make things awkward since she fucking lives with him. Shikamaru wasn’t prepared for the sudden turn on that was Katsumi’s passive aggressive threat to Temari. Sure, he’s aware he’s been somewhat turned on by Katsumi before. Watching her fight is fascinating and he’s well aware that she’s far from ugly. Besides, he’s known her for years, literally grew up with her. He knows exactly the things he likes about her. 

But fuck. He didn’t thing the Ninken would pick up on anything. Certainly didn’t expect them to say anything if they did. Katsumi had looked as mortified as he’d felt even if she handled it with her usual calmness once she pulled herself out of her shock. Shikamaru can’t believe he just had to defend himself to dogs. He was planning to build up to dating Katsumi. Planning on a nice, easy, naturally developing relationship. Not a pair of dogs asking him if he fucked Temari and if he got turned on by Katsumi. In front of her. Fuck. What a drag. 


	37. A Dummy’s Guide to Bonding With An Ishihara

Sai does not know what to make of Ishihara Katsumi. She is strange and does not follow the rules for human behavior consistently. Nor does she consistently behave in a manner similar to dogs or wolves. He does not like it. Shin probably would have been able to make sense of the girl. 

Sai prefers Fox to Katsumi. Fox is consistent. Is easy to understand and work with. Very straightforward and no mixed signals. If Ishihara Katsumi was like that all the time, he would be more comfortable with her. 

She tells him how to improve a smile then lashes out when he tries to form a bond using a shared experience between them like his book mentioned. She accepts his nickname for her but didn’t seem to genuinely appreciate when he woke her up. She attacks him for threatening Uzumaki Naruto, but seems willing to kill Uchiha Sasuke despite having a bond with him. 

She doesn’t seem particularly pleasant to be around, but from his observations she has many bonds. Sai is very confused on how she accomplished that when she doesn’t always behave in the manner his books suggest a person should. Danzo-Sama commanded him to watch her and try to bond with her though while also attempting to locate and kill Uchiha Sasuke. He thinks Ishihara Katsumi will be the more difficult of the two assignments. 

Sai is very unsure of how to go about bonding with her. She seems to alternate between friendliness and aggression frequently. Primarily when he interacts with her. She seems less confusing when she deals with others. Sai is not sure how to rectify the problem. His books don’t seem to have any advice that works with her. Small gestures do not work. Shared experiences do not work. Nicknames do not work. Sai will need to find something else. A different book may have an answer. 


	38. Katsumi dies AU: Ask The Ghosts If Honor Matters

Kakashi sets the last flowers down in front of the newest grave in the cemetery. He’d already spoken to the rest of his people. Had been too ashamed of his latest failure to face the little green eyed girl’s grave first. 

He’d mentioned her to Minato-Sensei and Kushina-Chan. Asked them to be patient with his littlest student. That she might be withdrawn or angry when they meet her. Made sure they knew she had a good heart, a loyal, brave one that just needed time to see. That she wasn’t always good at talking. He’d told Rin and Obito about her too. Asked Obito to try and make her laugh. If Naruto could do it, Obito certainly can. Told Rin not to let Obito argue with her. He’s not sure the Uchiha would win. His little student is a ferocious one. 

He stares at her gravestone, eyes tracing over the kanji of her name. Four characters. Only Thirteen years old. The same age and Rin and Obito. He thinks she’ll like them. Once she gets to know them a little. Kushina-Chan will certainly adore the girl. A real pair of spitfires. He can almost picture the little green eyed girl staring up at him, sharp little teeth glinting in the light as she smiles. Or maybe baring her teeth. He doubts she’s thrilled with him right now. 

“Good morning, Katsumi-Chan. Naruto is finally out of the hospital. His healing factor really helped. All your friends are making good recoveries. If you were here I’m sure you’d have to be restrained to keep you from jumping out a hospital window to train before recovering.”

He can see the little ghost roll her eyes at him. Can see the half hearted scowl at the poor joke. He thinks she’s amused though. Even if she’s scowling. Can practically hear her demanding to know if they succeeded in the mission. Little perfectionist. 

“You did well, Katsumi-Chan. I heard the mission report. No one is sure what you did while they were in that earth dome, but you did well. The mission succeeded because you didn’t quit. Neji said you were fighting even after you were hurt. That you used your clan jutsu to somehow poison the Oto Kunoichi. Very clever, little pup.”

He can see the scowl become a bright, proud grin. Watches the tiny ghost’s eyes light up at the praise. 

“Sakura said you gave the orders for her to take whoever she could and continue pursuing. That you didn’t even consider retreat. Brave, little thing that you are.”

He stops for a moment and he swears the ghost stops smiling at him. That she looks confused at his sudden silence. Can practically hear her asking him what’s wrong. Can imagine her worrying her bottom lip with her little needle teeth. 

“I’m sorry, pup. I was only fifteen minutes late according to the medics. If I’d been a little faster, you would be recovering in the hospital too. Would be demanding I teach you something new and trying to wheedle dango and Mochi out of me. Would be napping on the Hokage monuments after training with Naruto.”

He pauses again and thinks the ghost is rolling her eyes at him. 

“Was your mother there to greet you? I know your dream was to be as strong as she was. I’m sure she’ll be so proud to hear how far you went in only a few months. On track to be a jounin before eighteen, I’m sure.”

He pauses there. The knowledge she’ll never even see eighteen hitting him like a stab in the gut. This is peacetime. She should have been able to grow into herself. To grow up and have a long, happy life. The little ghost is smiling proudly again. Always responded so well to praise. 

“Naruto misses you. He refuses to talk about Sasuke now. He talks a lot about you though. Sometimes he laughs about things you did together. Cries too. He’s even more determined to be hokage now. He says you never once doubted him. That he’s going to become Hokage so you’re not proven wrong. What was your Nindo? Keep moving forward, wasn’t it? I think Naruto is adopting it along with his own. You certainly left a mark on this village. Whether people realize it or not.”

He stares at the little flickering ghost as she adjusts the swords on her back. He hopes she understands her fight is over. That she no longer needs to bare her teeth and draw her swords. He hopes if she does now, it’s only out of desire to practice, to enjoy the feel of the sword in her hands again. 

“Sasuke is in T&I right now. No decisions have been made with how to deal with him yet. The Nara clan is practically calling for his head though. What would you like us to do, Katsumi? You died for this mission to succeed. What would you do with him if you were here to decide?”

The ghost doesn’t answer. Just blinks slowly up at him, head tilted curiously and green eyes solemn. Of course she won’t answer. The dead never do. 


	39. (Don’t) Bring Your (Neighbor’s) Kid To Work Day

“You know you can’t have a baby in T&I, right Anko?” Ibiki can feel the migraine building as he stares at the fourteen year old Chuunin bouncing a two year old on her hip in the middle of his office. 

Anko isn’t swayed, because of course she isn’t. She’s _Anko._ “Show me the rules that say that. Oh no, you can’t. I checked, there are none.”

Ibiki is going to tell Inoichi the rulebook needs to be updated. Because _apparently_ some people need it written for them to understand not to bring a baby to T&I. The toddler is chewing on a rubber Kunai toy. He knows Anko is too young to have a kid, so who’s is it, anyway?

“Where’d you even get a kid?”

“Neighbor is on a mission, left her with Gai who got called on a mission two days later, who left her with Raidou who had his own mission to go to and so now I have her.” Anko beams and holds the kid up in front of her by the underarms. Clearly excited to be playing babysitter. 

“So who does this kid belong too?”

“Ishihara. He won’t care that she’s here as long as we don’t let her play with any torture devices. She’s teething for the second time, I think?”

“Second time?” Ibiki has no idea what the fuck that even means. 

“So her baby teeth all grew in, right? But then they all fell out and are coming in a second time and this time they’re super pointy and like little needles. So don’t let her bite you. It’s why she has the toy. Ishihara said it’s normal and this set will fall out too when it’s time for her permanent teeth to come it. It’s kinda freaky though. She hardly noticed when the first set all fell out.”

Right. Fuck, Ibiki isn’t even sure how to respond to that. He wasn’t even fucking aware that was a thing. _What the fuck?_

“You have a prisoner to interrogate today, Anko. You can’t have a baby with you.” Surely she’ll get that. 

Immediately, she’s practically crushing the poor kid to her chest and glaring at him, “It’s my baby time. I’m not going to give her to someone else. Besides, it’ll throw off any prisoner if I just walk right in with her. I mean, look at her! She’s adorable and watch what happens when I take the toy.” 

As soon as the toy is out of the kid’s mouth, there’s unholy screaming and sure enough he has a clear view of a mouth half full of teeth that look like a cross between puppy teeth and needles. _What the ever loving fuck?_ Anko pops the toy back in the child’s mouth and immediately the kid calms down. 

“You’re still not taking her into an interrogation room.” Ibiki has to draw the line somewhere. This is the hill he’s going to have to die on, he supposes. 

Anko scowls at him, “Fine. I’ll deal with the prisoner. You watch her while I’m gone. She’s not much of a talker, but if she hears one curse word she’ll repeat it for a month. Then Ishihara will kill everyone in T&I. And she bites. Fair warning.”

Before Ibiki can argue further, the kid is in his lap and staring up at him, steadily gnawing away on the toy. Anko is out the door before he can stop her. Shit. Kids normally cry at the sight of his scars. This kid is going to be fucking traumatized. He doesn’t even know this kid’s name and he’s now stuck trying not to fuck the kid up. 

“You have a name, brat?” Inoichi is going to die laughing if he comes in and sees Ibiki trying to talk to a two year old. Fuck, there goes his reputation if anyone sees this. 

The kid blinks up at him and tries to stand up in his lap. Shit. Ibiki has to lift her up to avoid having her crush his balls. As soon as she’s standing, she lets go of the toy with both hands, apparently the brat’s bite force is much stronger that he expected if she’s not dropping it. The brat starts pulling on his mouth, trying to open it. With a resigned sigh, he opens his mouth for her. 

Ibiki can honestly say he’s never seen such a look of concentration on such a small child before. When she starts poking his teeth, it clicks. She’s trying to figure out why his aren’t sharp too. 

“Kid, no one but you and your Otou-San have those teeth. Anko says you can talk. Anyone bother to teach you your name?”

Kid let’s her hands return to the toy. After a moment of chewing she pulls it out, “Ka’sumi.”

Ibiki can see the fucking teeth marks on the toy and decides he very much does not want this kid to decide to bite him, “Katsumi?”

A nod. Alright, well at least she knows her name. She doesn’t seem inclined to keep talking though and falls on her butt back into his lap. Well, that’s fine, he supposes. He’s got paperwork to deal with anyway and she seems content enough to sit there. He though kids were supposed to be more energetic. 

He works through the paperwork as the toddler gnaws away at the toy. Honestly, he hardly notices her. She’s utterly silent aside from the quiet sound of tiny teeth gnawing rubber. 

Anko’s return is as loud and bombastic as always as she explodes into the room screaming that she broke the man. Shit. The explosive entrance makes him spill a bottle of ink. On the baby. 

“Fucking damn it.”

“Ibiki! I leave her alone with you for one hour and you do that! And you cussed in front of her! You can’t do that!”

The kid starts wailing and drops the toy. Shit. Oh fuck. Before he can pick the toy up for her, there’s tiny teeth sinking into his forearm. _Through_ his leather jacket. Holy fucking shit. _What the everloving fuck?!_

He pries the furious, ink covered kid off his arm and Anko practically yanks her away, trying to get the ink off her. 

“Ibiki, there’s ink on her toy. Wash it unless you want her to keep biting!”

Sure enough, the kid is baring her teeth furiously at him. It’d be cute if she hadn’t just bit him. She’s not screaming anymore at least. 

Before he can do much else, the kid starts talking and Anko looks murderous. 

“Fucking Damn it! Fucking damn it! Fucking Damn it”

_Shit_. He’s definitely having the rules updated. No more brats.


	40. Of Wolves and Still Water

Asuma has been to the Nara household plenty. He’s seen the Ninken. Has heard Shikaku and Yoshino talk about their little ward or whatever the hell the kid is. Had heard plenty about her from his students. Somehow though, he hadn’t expected to see her at dinner. Ever. She’s never been around when he came by. 

He’s only seen her in passing since her match with Shikamaru. He’d heard plenty though. From his students and other shinobi. All eyes are on the rookie thirteen. Twelve now that Uchiha is gone. Even more so, all eyes are on Hatake’s last two brats. The Uzumaki jinchuriki that Jiraiya took on a training trip for two years and the kid who made a name for herself during the invasion by ripping throats out with her teeth. At this point that story has circulated so many times no one is sure how many people she actually killed that way. The fact she took Uchiha’s eye out only further added to the rumors and opinions circulating around the girl. 

Civilians talk about her like she’s a monster in a little girl’s body. As if she’s anymore dangerous than any other shinobi that lives in the village. Shinobi talk is much more favorable. The only daughter of the terror that was Ishihara Satoshi. The prized student of Hatake Kakashi. Already taking solo missions and leading teams of more experienced chuunin. And leading well, seems to quickly be developing the same ability to bring her comrades back alive that Hatake has. Everyone expects a jounin promotion soon. 

Meeting her is odd. Not what he was expecting really. His students tell him about a girl who used to let Ino braid flowers into her hair and who likes to nap while Shikamaru cloud watches and shows Choji the exact same kindness Choji shows everyone. Civilians talk like she’s a pretty but bloodthirsty demon. Shinobi talk like she’s a brutal but reliable comrade. He figures the truth is somewhere between all those opinions. 

What he gets is a solemn faced girl with thin burn scar under one eye and lightning tracks up her hands and arms in a light green yukata who watches him impassively and speaks only when Shikamaru prompts her to. She doesn’t look bored though. If she’s uncomfortable, she hides it well. Sits so still and moves so smoothly that he hardly notice the movement, it’s easy for his eyes to skip over her. Genma does that too sometimes. Unnerving fucking skill to have. 

Eventually he gets sick of the impassive, pale green eyes boring into him. Decides he wants to see for himself how she is. Asks her about Hatake and the jounin exams and her specialty. 

Near identical specialty to Hatake. If not identical. She doesn’t blink once as they speak. Her gaze never once moves away from him and he gets the impression of a wolf staring him down and waiting for him to show a single sign of weakness. She doesn’t seem bothered by the fact she’s not taking the jounin exams. Doesn’t seem eager to offer a drop more of information than he asks for. 

Mentioning her father doesn’t get any outward reaction from her. Not so much as a muscle twitch or a change in breathing. The temperature of the room still seems to drop though. Shikamaru is giving him a look that he’s come to know means he’d really like him to shut up. 

She doesn’t speak again after that. Just continues watching him the rest of the night. Ishihara Satoshi used to watch people that way. Normally before he decided to stab them. Hatake watches people like that too, when he’s calculating and planning things out. He’s not sure which of the pair she takes more after in that regard. Not sure which would be more comforting really. 

He leaves and finds he still isn’t sure who the girl his students are so attached to is. From the way the Nara clan seems to attached to her though, he figures she must be alright. As long as she’s not reading porn in public, he figures she’s not too much like Hatake. 


	41. Mercy Killing

Naruto loves Katsumi. He really does. She’s always been there for him. He’d happily go to hell and back for her. No hesitation or questions asked. Seeing her after two years apart? Made his year. He’d figured she’d have changed some while he was gone. Would have gotten stronger too. Would have looked a bit older and been a bit more experienced. A few more scars, maybe. He expected all that. 

Seeing Sensei carry her piggyback style to meet him? That was a bit unexpected. Of course, she spent two years training and working exclusively under Kakashi-Sensei. They were bound to get close. The pair of Ninken? Badass and Naruto thinks they’re perfect for his more introverted teammate, talking when she’s not sure what to say. The bell test they win? That was amazing. They’re even more awesome now than before. 

Seeing the differences in how she fights? That’s new. Her Taijutsu is an entirely different style than he remembers. All flowing and avoiding hits and using his weight and strength against him. The way her eyes go ice cold sparring? That’s definitely new. The way she and Sensei move like one brain in two bodies without needing more than a single word spoken between them? That’s new. Feeling like he’s out of place occasionally when he trains with them? Like he’s an outsider looking in? That’s new and terribly unpleasant. 

Hearing about some of the missions she’s taken? Those are surprising. Most are bloody. A few are Assassinations. He gets the feeling she’s not even mentioning the worst ones. The fact she can discuss them like she’s discussing the weather? Naruto isn’t sure how to feel about that. 

Still. She’s Katsumi and Naruto loves her and she’s still as steady as a compass. Seeing her drinking and leaning against Shikamaru and leading the drunk choir the night of Kiba’s bonfire? There she looks as warm and happy as the girl he remembers. Looks like the girl that gave him his history with a sly smile and silver tongue and expected nothing in return. Reminds him of the girl he’d kissed for only a moment when he was happier than he can remember ever being. 

Hearing her calmly discuss the possibility of killing Sasuke? That startled him. He doesn’t want Sasuke to die. He wants him to come home. Back to Konoha. Back to team seven. That she’s already planning for the possibility that he won’t? She sounds like a different person. Cold and harsh, yet so terribly honest. Naruto has always appreciated her honesty. She’ll always tell him truths even if they’re terrible ones. Will look him in the eyes and tell him terrible truths that he wishes would stay tucked away in the dark. She never does that without purpose though. Will force him to look into whatever abyss she is until he understands why she says what she says. 

It’s not that the idea never crossed his mind. When he saw Katsumi get hit with that arrow? When he heard her shrieks of pain and couldn’t help her? When Katsumi nearly died? When their friends nearly died? It crossed his mind. He might have done it himself then. If Sakura hadn’t been there. If Sasuke had said a single word about Katsumi. 

But they did bring him back. He was supposed to get the help he needed. Was supposed to stay put. Was supposed to get better. Not escape and run off to Orochimaru. He was going to remove the seal. He has at least most of it figured out based on Jiraiya’s notes. It’s doable. 

Katsumi doesn’t lie to him though. She’s right that if he wants to be hokage, he has to put the needs of the village above one person. Even if it’s someone he cares about. She’s right that there’s a chance Sasuke is already a lost cause. She’s right and only telling him things he already knows but doesn’t want to consider. 

On his travels with Jiraiya he learned as much. Not every person can be saved. Not every person can be redeemed. Sometimes the right thing is ugly and bloody and painful. He learned all that. It doesn’t mean he likes it. Certainly doesn’t mean he won’t exhaust every possible avenue before giving up. Going straight for the most unforgiving option is just too much. Especially when it’s against someone who matters to him. He knows he probably won’t be able to kill Sasuke if it comes to it. Probably won’t be able to stand aside and watch Katsumi do it. 

Killing Sasuke? He’s not sure who would break more by doing it. Him or Katsumi? He hates killing. He can do it. Has done it. Will do it again. Doesn’t like it though. Tries to avoid it if he can. He’s not sure he could survive killing a friend. 

But Katsumi? She’s great at killing. Doesn’t hesitate or go back and forth on it. Can kill like it’s nothing. He remembers her disappearing into the mist with Haku and Zabuza and coming back bloody. Killing doesn’t phase her. But killing someone she called a pack mate? He thinks that might shatter her. Might make her eyes go cold forever. 

Naruto loves Katsumi. Always has. Is willing to go to hell and back for her. He’s willing to hold her back from destroying herself too. Even if she hates him for it in the end. She’d do it for him. 


	42. Fatherly Advice

Shikaku’s noticed the change. Subtle as it is. His son touches Katsumi more freely, his eyes follow her movements more. He’s clearly jealous whenever he sees the excitement she has over the gift Uzumaki gave her. 

He moves a pawn forward. Ten moves and Shikamaru will lose. 

“You know, Son, if you don’t work for something, you can’t be angry when you lose it.”

Shikamaru’s eyes move from the board to him and he can see the kid’s mind working fast, “I’m not losing yet.”

Shikaku looks at the board again. Not yet, but he’s certainly on a downward spiral, soon he won’t be able to recover, “You’re not doing much to prevent it.”

Shikamaru glares at him, “You’re not talking about shogi.”

Statement. Not a question. Shikaku shrugs a bit, “A lot of Kunoichi end up marrying someone from their genin team, you know. It’s not uncommon.”

Shikamaru reacts as expected, in the conversation and on the board. Moves his knight and narrows his eyes, “Your point?”

“That girl won’t wait forever, you know. Girls like her never do. Whatever you’re trying to do, I suggest to do it. Uzumaki seems to be picking up the slack, right now.”

Shikaku takes the knight while keeping an eye on his son’s reaction. He looks like he wants to argue. His son gets so frustrated whenever they play shogi. Of course, Shikamaru has never won against him, so that’s probably why. 

“Naruto doesn’t like her that way.”

“No? Those swords are from Uzushio. Uzumaki made. Practically a declaration of intention even if they don’t realize it now.”

“They’re just friends.”

“And that’s all you are too. But you’re unhappy whenever she looks so pleased with her gifts. What’s going to happen when Uzumaki finally figures out they’d work well together? You going to be content to stand aside and watch?”

Yoshino better be happy he’s bringing this up. She’s been fretting over it for weeks now. Shikaku is exhausted from hearing about how Shikamaru might not get his head out of his ass and she won’t get the daughter-in-law she wants. He’s pretty sure she’s been planning the fucking wedding for years already. Gives him a migraine just considering it. 

Shikamaru moves so slowly sometimes, Shikaku worries he’s just going to let the world pass him by. Never In his life did he expect his son’s love life to be headache inducing. The fact he has to interfere is ridiculous to him. He doesn’t even mind who either of the kids end up with. The Nara clan doesn’t care about arranged marriages or anything like that. Too troublesome. But he won’t deny he has a preference. Certainly won’t pretend Yoshino doesn’t. 

He makes the final move on the board and smiles lazily when his son gives the board a furious look. Another loss for Shikamaru. At least this one is only a game.


	43. Flashbacks And How To Piss Off A Hatake

Dog isn’t expecting the fucking wall to light up with seals. Barely has time to react as the world falls down around them and all he can see for a moment is Obito being crushed by rocks by an Iwa trap. He doesn’t think, reacts on pure instinct and shoves Fox down. Cradles her head with his hand and uses his body as a shield between her and the explosions. Forgets entirely that Cat is fast enough to use his wood release to keep them all in one piece. 

All he can see is another one of his people being crushed when he hears Fox’s startled yelp. That’s what set him off. That noise. Hearing that is what got him moving. What got him shoving her to the ground and offering himself up to the explosion instead. 

When the world settles again his ears are ringing and he’s a bit stunned by the explosion and collapse of the tunnels, but fine other than that. When Fox doesn’t respond right away, he feels a sliver of panic. Why isn’t she responding? She’s not moving and he forgets entirely that Cat has made sure none of them died and all he can think is that he’s lost another person. 

He’s growing steadily more panicked even as he feels her pulse, what if even with his hand Cushioning her head, she’s got a head injury? Or a neck injury? Fuck. What if she’s got a brain bleed or something? Why isn’t she responding?

It’s too dark for him to see her. Too dark to see if she’s bleeding or has a head injury. Fuck. He shakes her shoulder a little. Calls her code name. It’s a long long few seconds before she finally responds. 

Kami. Fuck. She sounds dazed and a bit confused, but she’s talking. She’s moving. She’s fine. She’ll be fine. She’s not Obito. Fox isn’t Obito and this isn’t an Iwa trap. She’s fine. 

The relief is all consuming for a moment before Dog gets ahold of himself. They have a mission to finish. An old man to kill. Before, Dog just wanted to kill him because the fucker has been a pain in the ass for years now. Fucking years. Now he’s damn near feral in his desire to kill the man. Fuck. How dare he try to blow them up. If nothing else, Dog is going to eviscerate the man for making him think he was loosing Fox the same way he lost Obito. That’s more than enough reason to fucking end him. 

He represses a snarl as he calls out orders. It’s time to go. They have a traitor to put down. 


	44. The Trouble With Sake

Shikamaru is tired and drunk and getting his troublesome girl home was a challenge. Katsumi isn’t normally that outgoing. Prefers to leave most people alone and doesn’t feel the need to talk to everyone. She had a lot to drink though and was happily waving and calling out to everyone they passed as he tried to get them home. 

He’s more than happy to pass out on his bed as soon as he gets them inside. His eyes fall shut nearly instantly. He’s not expecting Katsumi to do what she does next. 

His eyes fly open when she crawls into his lap and braces herself on his chest. He can see her eyes are a bit glassy from drinking and her smile is wider than normal. 

Shikamaru watches her intently, his head clearing a bit more as he processes what’s happening. Fuck. She looks amazing. If only they were more sober. 

He doesn’t resist when she leans down to kiss him, lets her do it happily. Hardly notices his hands on her legs. She tastes like Sake and dango when he deepens the kiss. When she presses down on his crotch, unintentionally he’s pretty sure, he has to break the kiss. She’s too drunk and he’s not much better and this isn’t something that he should let continue tonight. They haven’t been a couple long, have barely kissed. He thinks she would regret anything else in the morning. 

The noise of complaint she makes is quiet and Shikamaru has never been more reluctant to tell her no in his life. She’s pouting at him like he took her swords from her or something and he really, really hates that he has to stop whatever it is she’s doing. 

Oh. Fuck. The next grinding she does on him is definitely deliberate. It goes straight to his dick and fuck, that’s enough. No matter how much he enjoys it, he needs to stop this. With great reluctance, He grabs her hips and holds her as still as he can. She’s way too drunk for any of this. 

He knows as soon as she rolls off him awkwardly that she’s going to throw up. Can see the panic on her face as the nausea hits her. Yeah. Fuck. There it is. 

Troublesome. He rolls his eyes and makes himself get up to follow her. He sits on the ground beside her and holds her ponytail out of her way and looks upward in exasperation. Fucking troublesome. Not that he’s really that annoyed. Katsumi is the kind of troublesome he doesn’t mind, after all. 


	45. Better To Beg Forgiveness

Sasuke needs to go. He has to get stronger and he can’t do that here. It’s not possible. He has to leave if he wants any chance of avenging his clan. It’s not a choice anymore. He’s not getting strong enough here. Everyone is getting stronger except for him. Fuck, Katsumi’s a Chuunin now even. And he got beat by one of the weakest people from the academy. Going to Orochimaru is his only option. He needs to do this. 

He’s not expecting for Katsumi to fucking melt out of the shadows and stand in his way. Not prepared for her to watch him like he’s a threat. He tries, really he does to make her understand. She has to understand. She lost a clan too. Surely she would get it. If she had a chance to make Kiri pay for her clan’s death, surely she would take it too. 

She doesn’t get it. Why can’t she get it? He has to do this. He doesn’t have a choice. He will never be strong enough. Konoha will always hold him back. He’s not abandoning her though. Not abandoning the Dobe Or Kakashi-Sensei, either. He’s going to come back as soon as he kills that man. He is. So why is she looking at him like he’s ripped her heart out of her chest? Like he’s betrayed her at the deepest level? This is only temporary. A necessary evil to achieve his goal. 

He needs to leave. This back and forth is only holding him back. He’ll be quick. Won’t hurt her. She’s his teammate and he doesn’t need to hurt her. She’ll understand eventually. She’ll forgive him. 

He’s not expecting her to react as fast as she does when he goes to strike the pressure point in her neck. Agony explodes and his face is ripped open and he can feel his eye pop sickeningly. Fuck. Fucking bitch. He needs his eyes to achieve his goal. He can’t afford to loose even one. Fuck. 

He still catches her on instinct though as she falls from his strike to her pressure point. He’s always tried to look out for his idiot teammates. Can’t help it. They need someone to watch their backs. So for the last time in what may be a very long time, he catches Katsumi. He’s angry and his eye is screaming in pain and there’s blood pouring down his face and for one vicious, furious moment he contemplates snapping her neck. It’d be so easy. She’s unconscious and can’t fight back. Wouldn’t even feel it. She’d never even realize what happened. So easy. So fucking easy. 

He shakes those thoughts away though. He won’t kill her. As pissed and as much as his eye is in agony, he won’t kill her. She’s Katsumi. She’s His and Naruto’s and Sensei’s. She’s the only one who might ever have a chance of understanding his desire for revenge. He won’t kill her. When he comes back they’ll work it out and be a team again. It’ll be fine. 

He sets her carefully on a nearby a bench. Makes sure she’s facing away from the street. Tries to make sure it’s comfortable enough out of sheer habit. He can’t stay any longer though. He has to go. Without looking back at his teammate he leaves, trying to keep pressure on the bleeding of his eye and face. He has no choice. He has to go. Katsumi can’t stop him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is when his mental state was only being messed with by a stage one curse mark, so he’s not quite so nuts yet


	46. A Mother Always Knows

Yoshino knows everything that goes on in her house. Especially in regards to the children. Knows Shikamaru and Katsumi are a couple. Knows when they sneak in drunk no matter how quiet they have to be. Knows when Shikamaru has a bad day and wants to be alone. When Katsumi is stressed and needs something repetitive to do to lose herself in. She knows everything. 

Even the things she shouldn’t know and doesn’t have confirmation on. Like that Shikamaru has probably picked up Asuma’s smoking habit when he’s coming down from post mission nerves. Like the fact Katsumi is almost assuredly ANBU. 

She’s heard the whispers about Shimura Danzo steadily grow. Enough so that even civilians like Haruno Mebuki who pay little attention to gossip are talking about it. Yoshino is no fool. She sees how much Shikaku is working lately, how much he’s struggling to sleep. Knows from experience he’s only like this when something very, very terrible is coming. 

When Katsumi disappears, supposedly on a mission, and the village is nothing but nerves and short fuses, she knows whatever the issue is has come to a head. When The village is put on temporary lock down, Yoshino knows her children and her husband will not be locked down with her. 

The evening the lockdown begins, she asks Shikaku, point blank how bad things are. Watching him work his jaw tells her want he doesn’t want to. It’s bad. 

“Shikaku? Is Katsumi going to be involved?” She needs to know. Needs to brace herself for the worst, just in case. 

Dark, soft eyes fly to her and she can see the spinning gears behind them. Her lazy, terrifyingly intelligent, protective, proud husband looks like he’s in near pain trying to find an answer that will satisfy her without giving her classified information. 

“You know I can’t tell you that.” He’s remorseful. After nearly twenty years of marriage, she can read him like a book. 

Yoshino purses her lips because she knows he’s as good as confirming it for her. Katsumi is most definitely ANBU and is most definitely going to be in the middle of whatever is happening to put the village on lockdown. She fears for her children every time they leave on missions. For Shikaku too, though he only goes on missions occasionally these days. Yoshino is no fool. She was a Kunoichi long before she was a mother. She knows good and well all the ways a mission can go wrong. 

She just never expected one of her children to have a mission in the village that they might not return from. What a cruel joke. The village is supposed to be a safe haven. 


	47. Honey Over Vinegar

Itachi watches the girl carefully. She’s working on a water jutsu. Nearly perfect, but not quite there. He can see the skill though. Can tell she’ll figure out the problem on her own in time. From what he’s gathered, she’s no fool. Headstrong, perhaps, not easily swayed once she’s made a decision, but no fool. 

His little brother’s teammate. Daughter of Wolf. He remembers that man. Cold and distant behind the mask. Shisui had babysat the girl for him before. Only once before the clan council had put a stop to it. Claimed it would make the clan look like it was trying to steal children of other shinobi. Itachi remembers Shisui’s irritation at that. They’d been young, Itachi was only ten or so then, not yet ANBU, and Shisui was maybe fourteen, the girl couldn’t have been older than four and he doubts she remembers it now. Shisui had enjoyed it. Shisui had always been kind. Had liked doting on the children the village had been built to protect. 

Zetsu has reported on the fates of the Akatsuki members that had gone missing. An ANBU operative in a Fox mask, clearly younger than the rest. First appearance was nearly two and a half years ago. Ishihara Katsumi is only a few months so shy of seventeens. Fourteen years old and in ANBU. He knows too many people now who picked up a mask before they were done growing. Konoha has a habit of producing children too good at war to be allowed to remain children for a moment longer than necessary. 

She’s not afraid of him. It’s interesting. She’d met his eyes without flinching and told him she’d kill Sasuke if she had to. Met his eyes as if the sharingan meant nothing to her. Unusual for someone who’s spent any length of time around an Uchiha. Almost arrogant. But she’d shown no signs of thinking she could win against him. So perhaps it was merely her way of letting him know he would not sway her. He can respect a will like that. Even if he does not like the stance she’s taken. 

So he takes a different approach. She’s not one easily swayed by fear. Pushing against her would only make her more set in her ways. She doesn’t know him, doesn’t trust him. She won’t listen to him if he tells her something. But from what he’s gathered, she’ll listen to those she trusts. The Nara’s can sway her, Uzumaki Naruto can sway her, Hatake Kakashi can sway her, the Hokage can sway her. Anyone else’s opinions may be considered, but it’s them she listens to. He needs her to consider, seriously, letting Sasuke live. Which means he has to win her over enough that he can sway her, too. Not an easy thing. She’s distrustful and paranoid and watches everyone around her like she’s waiting for a fight. She looks at him like she’s waiting for a reason to see him dead. 

Convincing Kisame to help is easy enough. He’s bored and has nothing to do and is interested enough in meeting an Ishihara. He thinks the girl will warm to Kisame quicker than him anyway. Blood recognizes blood and Kiri blood runs thicker than most, even in those from separate clans. It’s an interesting thing he’s noticed. Those from Kiri seem to intrinsically recognize their shared heritage, even if they’ve never set foot in Kiri before. 

Kisame says it’s in the blood. Blood and water and a violent history they all share. He doesn’t understand it. Konoha isn’t quite like that. The Kiri clans had always been close, despite their violent histories, even before that village formed. Practically lived on top of each other already. It makes sense on some level, he supposes, that there’s a common thread in their temperaments. He suspects its less to do with blood and more to do with ingrained behaviors and patterns that were commonly expected in those born to Kiri clans. 

She seems more irritated by Kisame than he expected. Her teeth stay bared nearly the entire time Kisame speaks with her. But she listens. She answers. She watches the swordsman with sharp dagger eyes and obeys when he has her try her jutsu with the corrections this time. Doesn’t seem irritated when he lifts her up and throws her. Itachi thinks that’s interesting. She’s not bothered by physical altercations like that. She must know on some level where she stands in those. It’s when she feels she’s on shaky ground or doesn’t understand someone’s motives that she lashes out, he suspects. 

She glares at him even as she thanks him for the advice about asking Kisame for training. Thanks him like she’d rather drown him in the river. He can see why she’s in the bingo book when she looks like that. Hellhound indeed. He wonders how anyone could look at this girl and see anything but a threat now. She’s not the smiling child he remembers Shisui happily carrying around the Uchiha compound for a week, oblivious to the disapproval of the clan. Regardless, he needs to win her over, needs her to turn her fury to something other than his foolish little brother. Which means offering his hand to a hellhound and risking its bite. The things he’s willing to do for his Otouto. Shisui would be much better suited for this. Much better at winning her over. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every shinobi ever, regardless of age, was essentially playing pass the baby with little Katsumi and the result tended to be Satoshi going on a scavenger hunt for his kid when he got back from missions


	48. Katsumi and Yuma Pairing: Unexpected But Welcome

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is what could happen if Katsumi and Hyena were to become a couple.

Somewhere between one bad mission and then next, it happens. Fox and Hyena have been partners for nearly six years now and they’ve gone through hell and back together. They get back from a mission that went bad in every possible way. Hyena had had to carry back Tiger and Fox had brought back the body scroll holding Mouse’s body and they’re keyed up and struggling to come back down and they’ve always fed off each others’ moods and maybe that’s why. 

They don’t go shower right away, too angry and frustrated and too utterly relieved to be alive to calm down. So they end up in the caverns training ground. They fight and lash out and curse at each other until their anger is spent and all that’s left is harsh breathing and the nervous left over energy of surviving by the skin of their teeth. 

That’s how it starts, if she were to pick a point. After that mission, down in the caverns. Fox and Hyena against a rough, uncomfortable cave wall, still bloody and half feral with adrenaline. There’s nothing gentle about it. Nothing romantic or loving. It’s harsh kisses and bruising grips and nails and teeth digging into skin. It’s filthy words growled into Fox’s ears and stifled, broken noises that only Hyena hears. 

They don’t talk about it afterwards. Not to each other or anyone else. It becomes a regular thing. Sometimes in their rooms, sometimes in the cavern, sometimes in the showers. they aren’t picky and it’s not unusual for ANBU to fuck after missions in the training grounds or showers. It’s a release, a good way to come down from a mission high. No one cares. Fox and Hyena have been partners in ANBU long enough that most probably figured it was inevitable. 

Katsumi and Yuma are a different story. She’d moved out of the Nara compound when she was seventeen. Had wanted her own space. Still visits them regularly, but she likes having her own home. Somewhere she can be alone without anyone checking on her. It’s nice. She has visitors plenty. Naruto, Sai, Kakashi, Sakura, Ino, they’ve all crashed on her couch at least once. After missions or parties or when they just don’t want to go home to their own empty apartments. She doesn’t mind. It doesn’t bother her. 

Yuma becomes a near constant presence there. There as often as her ninken. Practically lives with her. She doesn’t mind that either. Hyena and Yuma are different. Still intrinsically the same, just like she and Fox are. But there’s a difference. Yuma is a bit more contained. Still chaotic, still wild, but less like he’s a half step from broken. She learns he enjoys the repetitiveness of cooking. Will cook just about everything in her fridge when he gets back from a mission and wants to feel like he’s in control of something that doesn’t have the potential to get someone killed. He’s good at it. Katsumi decides she doesn’t mind having to go buy groceries again when he’s done. 

Sex with Yuma is different than sex with Hyena. They take their time. Trace over every scar each has with fingers and lips until there’s not a single one they don’t know about. Enjoy each other like there’s nothing else that exists beyond them. She wouldn’t call it gentle, it’s still rougher than anything she ever did with Shikamaru, but it’s drawn out and slow and makes Katsumi see stars. 

The dates start naturally. It takes them going out just the two of them a few times for her to realize that’s what it is. Dates. She finds she enjoys them. Yuma is sweet and funny and likes to take her out when they have the time. There’s no pressure for anything she’s not ready to do. No pressure to tell everyone they’re together and no pressure to put a name on their relationship and it’s nice. Katsumi likes it. 

There’s bad days on both sides. Days where Yuma isn’t fully there and his eyes are glassy and she knows any little thing could set him off and send him into a dissociative state. She learns on those days humming as she moves about helps keeping him from reacting badly to her movements. Learns he can’t be around crowds on those days because it’s just too much for him. That talking about anything she can think of with no expectations of him responding helps. He doesn’t speak to her on those days but he cocks his head to listen as she speaks. 

Yuma learns her bad days are mostly at night. Where she sits in silence and stares at her swords and contemplates things that she knows are bad but just can’t help but think about it. Learns that she doesn’t want to talk then. Won’t listen when he talks either. Yuma’s solution is to sit between her and her swords and hold her hands in his until they relax out of the fists she balls them into. 

She’s not sure either of them really know how to make the bad days better, but they try and when they can’t help, encourage a visit to the Yamanaka’s to talk it out with someone who actually knows what they’re doing. They make it work between them, learn what might cause a bad day for one of them and find ways to handle it. Katsumi learns he won’t ever visit the cemetery or the memorial stone except for funerals, but he’ll walk with her when she goes and wait outside of the area until she’s ready to leave. She’s bad at talking to people and gets uncomfortable easily, but she’ll do it when Yuma loses his words and needs a moment to remember he’s Yuma and not Hyena. 

It’s easy and difficult all at once. Easy because they’re similar enough to be comfortable together, and different enough to challenge each other and there’s enough shared history now to bind them together. Difficult because they’re shinobi and they live short, brutal lives and they’ve already outlived their life expectancies. There’s a certain terror they each have whenever they go on separate missions that this time will be when luck finally runs out and they bury another precious person. 

Their fights are few and far between, but they happen. Low voices and sharp, cutting words but neither walks away until they’ve resolved it. Until her snarls have faded and his hair is a mess from running his fingers through it in frustration. It never goes further than that. He doesn’t raise his voice, remembering she can’t stand shouting, and she does her best not to bare her teeth at him, remembering he doesn’t react well to that in an argument. It’s work and they visit the Yamanaka’s together often, not because they aren’t working, but because it helps to have someone there to talk them through their problems and help find solutions. They aren’t ashamed to admit they need help occasionally. Aren’t ashamed to ask for it either. 

Still, they value the time they get together. Yuma teaches her to dance in the little kitchen of her apartment thats been their apartment longer than it was just hers. Tells her his mother taught him when he was a small child and it’s the clearest memory he has of either of his parents. Katsumi is quietly humbled that he would share that with her. In return, she tells him about her father handing her a sword too big for her and commanding her to master it. It’s not quite the same, but she thinks it’s the clearest memory of her father she has. The one that comes to mind most when she thinks of him, certainly.

Eventually there’s a wedding. It’s small and nothing impressive, but everyone that matters to them is there, and she knows there’s a few ANBU watching from the shadows, she doesn’t bother trying to guess which they are. Katsumi figures she’ll find out next time she’s in HQ. Noisy bastards that her comrades are. Yuma takes her name, something she hadn’t expected or asked for, but she appreciates it, appreciates that he’s willing to let any pups have her clan name. 

She and Yuma live in their little apartment with her pack and it’s not perfect but she loves it. Taishiro bickers with Yuma, and Yuma and Chinami trades curses while Naoki tries to get them to stop because he doesn’t like bad words. Katsumi enjoys it. Enjoys watching him interact with her ninken. Enjoys coming home to him and enjoys having him in her bed. Looks forward to seeing him when he comes home from missions. They can’t be partners in ANBU anymore, too much of an emotional attachment, the same reason family members aren’t supposed to go on the same mission together if they don’t have too. A liability for the mission. 

They don’t like not working together anymore, they’re a good team. Hardly need anyone else with them in the field when they’re together, but they deal with it. They’re shinobi, its nothing they can’t handle. 

Before she knows it she’s twenty-five and far older than her mother ever got to be. Nearly half her life has been spent in ANBU and they’ve beaten the odds more times than she cares to count. Kakashi has finally retired from ANBU, and the person behind the Dog mask is a stranger and Yamato is head of the whole damn department now and isn’t that just terrifying to her? Yuma is still Hyena and he’s covered in new scars that she wasn’t there to see him receive and leads his own unit now. Katsumi splits her time between ANBU and the genin team she got a year after her wedding that still come and harass her whenever they have time despite not having been her genin for two years now. 

She’s twenty-eight when a child finally comes after three years of trying and two miscarriages. Yuma holds their son like he’s the most precious thing he’s ever seen and Katsumi doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing, but she thinks this happiness they’ve built together and the son they have now is their reward for all the suffering they’ve been through. Their son has Yuma’s shaggy, coffee colored hair and his pretty bluish-purple eyes and if it wasn’t for the pointed teeth and the stretch marks on her stomach, she’d swear she’d had no part in making the kid. 

When he’s old enough, she doesn’t hand him live steel and commands he masters it. She finds a wooden bokken that’s just the right size for him and teaches him the katas before ever handing him a sword. She wants to do better than her father did. Wants her son to make it out of childhood without scars. Yuma agrees. Still teaches their son all the things a shinobi should know, but they take their time. Make sure they don’t give him lessons he’s not ready for. Do their best to be there. Always try to have one of them in the village at all times. 

Slowly, they withdraw from ANBU. Yuma first. He’s tired, can’t keep up as well anymore as old injuries begin to catch up to him and he’s ready to put the mask down entirely by the time their son is in the academy. Takes a job in the missions intake for something to do and Fox begins to withdraw too. 

She’s done her time. Paid her dues and fought her battles. Outlived more comrades than she cares to count and if this is her happy ending she’d like to make it last as long as possible. So she stops. Takes a part time job at the academy teaching kenjutsu. Naruto had suggested it. He’d been Hokage for years now and been trying to get her out of ANBU without ordering her the entire time. Teaching Kenjutsu to children is apparently his solution to keeping her from getting bored. It works. She’s enjoys it well enough. She’d liked having a genin team more, but teaching kenjutsu is good. It’s rewarding to see the kids grow under her watchful eyes. Most will never specialize in kenjutsu, but there’s a few in every class that she can see the potential in. Can see the desire for it in. Those are the students that come back later and ask for extra lessons. Extra time and knowledge that their jounin Sensei don’t have in this area. Katsumi doesn’t turn any of them away. 

It’s easy and difficult all at once and there’s as much joy as there is pain in a life with Yuma, but Katsumi thinks there’s more good in it than bad. She certainly wouldn’t change it. It’s a happier, longer life than she ever expected to get and one that she had to fight for, and she’s satisfied. From the way Yuma still dances with her in their kitchen at night, she’s certain he is too. 


	49. Katsumi and Kakashi Paring: The Way Of Things

She walks away from ANBU when she’s nineteen. Truthfully, no one ever really walks away, semi retired or dead are the closest anyone ever really gets to putting the mask down for good without leaving active duty altogether, but Fox gathers dust in a storage scroll under her bed and only comes out on an as needed basis. 

She and Shikamaru fade back into friends slowly and Katsumi isn’t heartbroken over it. They didn’t work. It happens. Nothing really went wrong, there just wasn’t the kind of love between them that would make a happy life in the long term. Comfortable was the best they ever really managed. She doesn’t regret it, certainly, but she doesn’t want him that way either. Realizing that had been strange. Freeing too. Like she hadn’t realized she wasn’t satisfied until it was over.

Living alone is strange. She Hasn’t lived outside of the Nara compound in years, but she has a nice little apartment with just enough space for her and the pack. Katsumi decorates it carefully with the things her mother had left behind that her father had packed away in boxes when she’d died. Naruto gifts her with one of his Uzushio wind chimes that only go quiet when someone with intent to harm her comes near. Katsumi takes comfort in the pretty chiming. They help her calm down after bad missions. 

Kakashi checks on her multiple times week. Like he’s worried she’ll quit taking care of herself now that she’s on her own. He’s not her Sensei anymore but he still likes to keep an eye on her and Naruto. Overprotective man that he is. She doesn’t point out the mother hen behavior though. He’d just get awkward and Shushin away if she did. 

She’s a year into living alone when Dog shows up at her door, bloody and silent, at nearly three in the morning. The wind chimes don’t stop so she takes that to mean he’s not a threat despite the way he looks like he’s one wrong move away from attacking someone. She lets him in and makes sure every Move she makes is slow and clearly projected. Talks in a slow, easy tone to him and doesn’t once show him her back. Fox may be gathering dust, but she remembers well how to talk down a high strung ANBU. 

It takes two hours before Dog becomes Kakashi again and she has a mission she needs to leave for in an hour, but she lets him sleep on her couch and summons her pack to keep him company. She doesn’t ask for the details of his mission. Let’s him keep that to himself. He’s not the type to tell anyone his problems and will only close up more if she tries. 

It becomes a regular thing. Dog shows up post missions and the wind chimes keep ringing and by the time she leaves for a mission in the morning, he’s long gone. She takes to keeping extra blankets by the couch for him and makes sure he knows how to undo the traps Naruto made for her if he wants to stay while she’s gone. 

She’s twenty and just passed a genin team and she’s spent the last two months trying to figure out how to make her team function like a team instead of three twelve year olds that all hate each other, when Kakashi comes slouching into her apartment in the middle of the day and takes a seat on her couch and reads his porn like he lives there. She’s not exactly sure what he’s doing, but he’s pack and she doesn’t turn pack away. So he stays. And keeps coming back like that. Just wanders in and reads porn or sharpens Kunai or any other random thing he finds to do. 

Things change after a few months of this. She’s gotten her genin functional but nowhere near ready for the Chuunin exams and she needs a distraction. Kakashi seems to practically live on her damn couch when he’s not on missions so she decides to see if he’ll be a distraction for her. He reads enough porn she figures he’ll know what he’s doing. She hopes anyway. 

Kakashi looks startled at her boldness when she point blank invites him into her bed. Stares at her like she just told him that she’s actually Orochimaru in disguise. Disappears for two months and Katsumi grumbles a little to her ninken about the rejection but does her best not to linger on it. She has other things to focus on and she had just wanted a distraction anyway. 

Dog shows up again one night and she lets him in again. Offers her couch again and watches him stand in the middle of her apartment and watch her right back. She makes the mistake of looking away for a moment and suddenly he’s only a few inches away from her and she can smell the blood on him. Can smell desperation and stress and arousal on him. She tilts her head and demands the mask come off and that he shower first if he’s going to join her in her bed. 

She expects him to change his mind when he’s showering. To disappear again like he had when she’d asked him to fuck her two months ago. When he comes back out of her bathroom, hair dripping and with nothing but a towel with his ever present half mask covering his face she can’t help but be surprised. 

He insists on using her hitai-ate as a blindfold before he takes his mask off. Katsumi allows it. He’s touchy about that mask and she suspects only a few people have ever seen him without it. If that. 

It’s surprisingly gentle. Not at all what she would expect from Kakashi. Especially not when he’s just come off an ANBU mission. He touches her like she’s made of glass. Like he’s terrified of breaking her. By the time he enters her, she’s half mad with want and thinks she’s going to cry if he keeps this up. She needs more. He murmurs soothing meaningless words into the side of her neck and abruptly shifts to a brutal pace. Her mind goes blank when he does that and she has no idea what the noises he’s dragging out of her are but she really does not care. 

He’s gone in the morning and she’s pretty sure he’s probably having some kind of existential crisis or something. Kakashi and social situations really don’t go together naturally. Especially in regards to anything remotely intimate. So she lets him hide again. Pretends she can’t tell he’s studiously avoiding her. 

It keeps happening and after the fourth time, she tells him bluntly if this is going to be a regular thing she won’t tolerate him avoiding her afterwards. She doesn’t care if this is only casual or not, she has no interest in anything he doesn’t want to give her, but she refuses to only exist to him when it’s convenient if this is going to happen. He makes a small noise when she says that. Like he wants to argue, but nods in agreement. 

And that’s how things begin. 

It goes on this way for months. Until at some point she’s not sure whose money was used to buy groceries or when his Pack started taking up space in her apartment alongside hers. At some point her closet starts having clothes far too big for her kept in it and she just lets it happen. Doesn’t say a word the first time she comes back from a mission with her genin and finds him asleep in her bed. Just shoves his arm over and crawls in beside him. Nearly has a heart attack the first time he lets her see his face without his mask, barely manages not to visibly react to it. 

Neither of them talk about this or any of the other changes. Just take things in stride and let what happens happen. The first time Yamato shows up at her apartment to see if Kakashi is around, she’s struck with the odd realization that he lives with her. That she’s pretty sure he’s moved all his shit into her apartment over the past few months. She has no real idea what to think of that. But that explains why her rent is suddenly half what she’d been paying. She really needs to question these things more she supposes. 

They don’t talk about it when they start going out to dinner and bars together. Don’t talk about it when people start giving them curious looks. Don’t talk about it when they move to a larger home with more space for the ninken. It’s just a thing. Just life and Katsumi really doesn’t question it. Naruto gifts them more wind chimes and she’s pretty sure that’s approval of whatever this is. Gai comes around to challenge Kakashi to new tests and every time he sees her there he bursts into tears of joy for their “beautiful example of youthful love” or something and she just rolls with it. Kakashi never says anything about it so she doesn’t stress over it. 

Eventually Yoshino shows up with a giant wedding planner with Katsumi’s name in huge calligraphy across it and Katsumi and Kakashi just kind of go with it. Not like it changes anything. They’ve been acting like they were married for nearly three years now and this is just making it a bit more official. 

The wedding is pretty. Yoshino makes her up like a princess and Katsumi has never felt more like a doll. Naruto and Yuma try to prank Kakashi and she’s pretty sure introducing those two was the worst thing she ever did for the village. She’s not sure who let Gai give a speech at the wedding but she’s pretty sure her ears are never going to recover. Ever. 

Marriage to Kakashi is the same as if they weren’t married. Just can’t take missions together anymore. Her genin team are all Chuunin now and she picks up her Fox mask again and goes back to the shadows. Kakashi doesn’t mind it. She likes ANBU and she’d missed it in the years she’d stopped. 

She spends seven more years in ANBU before stepping away again to be Naruto’s advisor on the darker parts of running a Shinobi village. She ends up handling things that he doesn’t want to make the final decision on and she wonders sometimes if this is how Danzo started out. Ultimately though, she keeps on. Naruto needs her doing this, so she does. Kakashi voices his opinions on it only occasionally and only when he thinks she’s making a bad call. 

A set of twins come by accident when she’s thirty-two. The seal on her lower abdomen had needed replacing and she’d forgotten while dealing with an issue between Kumo and Kiri that threatened to drag everyone back into war. Kakashi has another existential crisis when she tells him about the pregnancy and Yuma and Naruto have to forcibly screw his head back on. 

Two little girls. With the Hatake white chakra and her eyes and her teeth. She only needs to watch them to know they’re going to surpass her and Kakashi both. Terrifyingly intelligent with skills far beyond their age. Katsumi is made even more determined to prevent war. Her daughters would be forced onto a battlefield years too young with their prodigious skill. 

Kakashi is simultaneously doting on them and distant. She’s not sure what to make of it and they have a massive argument over it until he finally explains his fears. That he’ll hurt them. That he’ll fuck them up. Katsumi has to snarl at him that if he keeps being distant he’ll do that no matter what. He works his issues out with Ino’s help eventually and she’s satisfied when he stops acting like he can’t decide if he loves his daughters or not. 

Katsumi outlives Kakashi. She doesn’t outlive her daughters though and for that she’s grateful. It’s a luxury not all her friends were afforded. Both her girls have signed the Hatake clan contract and they have each other and no matter what name they carry, they have Ishihara blood and two makes a clan for an Ishihara. Katsumi follows Kakashi without regrets or issues. Her girls aren’t alone and more than capable of protecting themselves now and she knows for a fact death isn’t the end of things for sure. Who knows, maybe she’ll run into her lost loved ones in the next life if there is one.


	50. Desperation Breeds Innovation

Kakashi watches his pup stand across from Asuma. Watches her bare her teeth at him as he tries to piss her off. Kakashi thinks he’s making a mistake doing that. An angry Katsumi is a vicious little thing to fight. Won’t stop until she’s nearly dead. Asuma would do better not to anger her. 

She looks exhausted from the fight with Sakura. Mostly dried off now, but he can see bruises and knows her ribs must be in a bad state. They’d all heard the cracking when Sakura’s mokuton had hit her. Heard her pained gasps. He doubts she has even half her chakra reserves left either. She’ll be hard pressed to make it to fifteen minutes. 

Sure enough, she’s on the defensive for the first half of the match. Dodging and blocking and dancing around Asuma’s blows. She looks like she’s doing well though. Manages to nearly blow Asuma sky high with a well aimed explosive tag. Clever pup. Or feral pup. He’s not sure right now. Her eyes have a wild look in them though. Like she’s half a step from mad. She had the same look in her eyes when she’d tried to kill Zabuza in Wave country. That’s not a good sign. 

Watching her send a Fire senbon jutsu as Asuma makes him blink. She rarely uses fire jutsu. Prefers water and lightning techniques. She must not have enough chakra left for water creation. 

Watching her nearly receiving third degree burns from Asuma’s burning ash technique makes Kakashi twitch. Makes him want to tell Ebisu to call the match. Katsumi’s good, but there will be other jounin exams. Other chances for promotion. 

She doesn’t seem scared though. If anything she looks excited. Like Asuma just gave her a gift. Like this is the most fun she’s ever had. She’s definitely not all there right now. Definitely letting instinct rule her to a certain extent. 

When Asuma manages to cut her straight across the chest, from one arm to the other, and blood starts pouring out, Kakashi has to fight not to interfere. Ebisu will call it if it’s clear she can’t continue. Katsumi won’t die. Asuma isn’t going to kill her. This is nothing his pup can’t handle. 

What she does next probably takes a decade off his life. He recognizes the first handseals for her water shrapnel jutsu. What worries him is the addition of the horse seal in the center of the Sequence that shouldn’t be there. Is she making a mistake? If so, whatever she’s doing could kill her. 

Watching her blood explode out of the wound on her chest, as fast as her water shrapnel normally does, causes Kakashi’s mind to go blank with panic for a minute. When he comes back to himself, Yamato is actually physically restraining him from interfering. He hadn’t even realized he’d jumped up onto the railing. There’s blood everywhere. She and Asuma are both covered in it. Asuma looks like he wants to stop the match and get Katsumi medical attention. She looks like she needs it. Her pupils are blown wide and he can hear her shaky, harsh breathing and see her wincing with every inhale. Fuck, his pup may have just shredded her lungs or her heart or a major artery or something. Fuck. She’s going to fucking die. 

She seems to disagree. Or maybe just doesn’t care. She buries her katana in the tile floor and snarls at Asuma like she’s daring him to keep coming. Asuma gets a resigned look for a moment and Kakashi can see he’s going to try and knock her out quickly. Try to end it so she can get medical attention now. 

She takes issue with that plan apparently and just keeps dodging. Keeps dancing around him, even as she slips in pools of her own blood. Kawarimis with her Katana to run the clock down and just kneels there for a moment. Ebisu shifts and Kakashi can tell he’s thinking about calling it. 

When Asuma tells her to forfeit, Kakashi is silently begging her to. Clearly she can’t keep going. She’s bleeding heavily and doesn’t seem able to keep standing. When she starts laughing, the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. That... is not a sane laugh. It’s wild and mad and sounds more like fucking Hyena on a bad day, than his student. Kami, she’s lost it. 

He watches her stumble to her feet and draw her remaining sword. Fuck. She’s so close to making it to the time, but she needs medical attention. Kakashi is going to strangle her if she survives this. What the fuck was she thinking using her own blood? 

Watching her try to run Asuma through with her Wakizashi from behind is concerning. This entire match has been concerning though. He knows she’s with in acceptable range by Psych standards. She wouldn’t have been allowed to take the exams if not, but still. She looks terrible. His pup is out of her damn mind. Clearly he didn’t teach her enough about self preservation. 

She’s kicked straight through the air the same moment the alarms finally go off. Thank Kami, it’s over. She’s on her hands and knees on the ground and hardly seems to notice the medics surrounding her. Hardly seems to be registering Asuma giving her back her sword or telling her she did well. Kakashi wants to yell at her when she seemingly ignores the medics trying to get her into the stretcher and stumbles to her feet and just walks off, dripping blood. There’s a long, long silence as the door closes behind her. 

“Hey, Hatake, what in the fuck did you teach that girl?” Asuma calls up to him as he lights a new cigarette. 

Kakashi looks away from the door and down at the large man, “Maa, just how to be a strong shinobi. She gets creative when she thinks she’s loosing.”

“Creative.” Genma drawls it from across the arena like he’s testing the word. 

Kakashi eye smiles as he covers his internal panic. His pup did well. He’ll kill her for that stunt later. When he knows she’ll be fine. Remind her that experimenting isn’t something she should do mid battle.


	51. Unpredictability or Insanity?

Shikaku watches impassively as Tanaka Yuma is lead out after Barely surviving fifteen minutes with Gai. Kid held his own. Until his jaw got broken at least. Then he’d played what amounted to a high stakes games of ninja tag. Smart kid. Can’t win, might as well run the clock down. Aburame had had to do that against Yamato. None of the three are expected to actually win against their opponents. They’re just expected to survive it. 

He picks Katsumi apart as she walks in. He wants to see her do well. He doesn’t know how many others realize she’d deliberately let her ribs get broken as a cover for making sure she could set up her electrocution plan, but it was smart. Sometimes a person has to give something up to gain ground in a shogi match. She’d played it well. But now it’s going to cost her. She’s injured, had used up a large amount of her chakra reserves, and shown her skill set clearly. This will not be easy for her. 

This is where she falls short in shogi. She can think through plans to get where she wants, but doesn’t think far enough ahead to predict the long term cost until it’s too late. Shikaku wants to see her make it to fifteen minutes, but he can’t think of a single strategy besides running that could even possibly get her there, based on what he knows of her skill set in comparison to Asuma. 

She looks tired. He can see her pupils are dilated though. A sign she took one of the Nara soldier pills Yoshino keeps giving her. Yuma had had that too. There’s no rule against it. She’ll need that energy. She’s lucky it will take twenty minutes to wear off. Assuming she just took it anyway. 

Asuma tries to mess with her head before the match starts. Katsumi doesn’t say a word. Just bares her teeth at the man. Shikaku isn’t surprised by that. She’s not much for banter in a fight. The fact she’d even responded when Haruno had questioned her being on the ceiling had been a shock. The footage from the other tests as well as her Chuunin exams don’t show a girl who is prone to talking when she’s fighting. 

He watches carefully as Asuma moves her around the arena. Doesn’t give her the space to do much. Keeps her focused on dodging. She’s good at close combat to a point. She can hold her own for awhile, but prefers mid range fighting these days. Her swords are the only reason she gets close to someone most of the time. Take those away and she switches to evasive Tactics until she can get away. That’s how she seems to operate. Not a bad strategy but it means she has to be able to think. Has to be able to make space. 

An explosive tag triggered close enough that he’s surprised neither of them are burnt is a good way to do that, he supposes. Asuma is clearly building up for his burning ash technique and Katsumi clearly doesn’t know that. She’s watching the man silently, Shikaku can see her eyes go to the clock. He’d forgotten she knew fire techniques. Fire senbon. Not a commonly used jutsu. Only minor differences in comparison to the Phoenix flower jutsu. Less chakra and less danger, but a lot more smaller flames that are a lot harder to dodge. He’s pretty sure the burn on her cheek is from it. 

Asuma returns the favor with his burning ash technique. He can see Katsumi’s mind working fast as she takes in the smoke cloud. Can practically see the moment she realized she needs to get away from it. She doesn’t look scared though. Despite the wide eyes. She looks like she’s enjoying it. Shikaku’s not sure what to make of that. If that means she’s loosing control of her instincts or not. He hopes not. 

Watching her draw her swords and resume the match up close is not surprising. Now that she has her swords out, she’ll have an easier time. At least for a few minutes or so. When Asuma gets through her guard and leaves a cut through her flak jacket and blood starts staining it, Shikaku narrows his eyes. She won’t be able to make fifteen minutes. That’s a lot of blood. Nothing fatal. But it’s more than enough to make her light headed soon. He figures she’ll be sulking when she gets home tonight. He’ll see if Yoshino will make the Mochi Katsumi likes. Better she eat sweets than get drunk over her disappointment. 

He’s not prepared for her next move. He’s not sure anyone is. Hatake is being restrained by Yamato and Ebisu has clearly lost his composure. Even Lady Hokage reacts. A sharp inhale through her nose and a widening of her eyes. He can see her make a sign to the medics to be on standby. 

He has no idea what the fuck that move was. Has no idea why she thought it was a good idea, but watching blood explode out from her chest to try and impale Asuma is horrifying. It looks like she’s been killed. If she damaged any of the major arteries or veins in her chest, this match has to end. 

Katsumi is on the ground after she kawarimi’ed with her discarded Katana and she’s bleeding heavily. Asuma is telling her to forfeit and Shikaku hates it, but he agrees. Three minutes left or not, she needs medical attention and clearly she can’t keep going. 

Her laughter tells everyone she doesn’t give a shit. He remembers seeing the video of her time in the Forest of Death during the Chuunin exams. This laughter is the same as then. When she knew she couldn’t win and didn’t give a damn. It’s a mad laugh that had sent chills down his spine when he’d heard it in the video footage. Now it’s worse. Much more viscerally unnerving. 

That she stands up and continues on isn’t surprising anymore. The girl has too much fight in her and a spine of steel. She would never consider forfeiting when she’s so close to the end. She’ll continue on as long as she’s able to move. At this point he’s not sure where she learned that stubbornness. It’s not pride. He knows that. She’s not one of those people. 

The match ends as she’s being flung through the air like a rag doll by a vicious kick from Asuma. The entire arena is utterly silent as they watch Katsumi on her hands and knees, breathing hard. She’s clearly out of it. Seems to barely be registering the medics surrounding her or Asuma giving her the Katana back. Just walks out in a clear daze as the medics try to get her onto the stretcher. Thank Kami, Shikamaru isn’there to witness this. His son would have made a scene. And Shikaku isn’t sure he would blame the boy. Fuck. Katsumi needs to stop with the surprises. She’s going to drive him into an early grave. 


	52. Katsumi and Naruto Pairing: Duty Comes First

Katsumi is eighteen and she and Naruto move in together as roommates after Sai and Ino move in with each other and she and Shikamaru break up. It’s easy. It’s cheaper to afford a nicer apartment together. Living with Naruto is an adjustment. There’s ink and paper and calligraphy brushes everywhere. Every time she summons her ninken, Naoki ends up needing to a bath to get the ink out of his fur. She has to make sure there’s food other than instant ramen the fridge and that the kitchen counters don’t get covered in fuinjutsu supplies. 

Both of them are busy most of the time. She’s busy with ANBU, while he’s working with his genin team and pestering lady Hokage to let him help her with Hokage business. So they only see each other sometimes, despite sharing an apartment.Katsumi has to be careful not to leave her ANBU things laying around, because Naruto’s brats are in and out of the apartment like they own the place. They call her nee-Chan, except for one of the little monsters who calls her baa-Chan even though she’s not even nineteen. That brat is her favorite. Little terror of a child. 

Things start around then, after he and Hinata break it off, because Naruto hasn’t been able to give Hinata the time she needs between his genin team, his Fuinjutsu, and learning the ins and outs of how to run a hidden village. It’s casual. She needs an outlet after her ANBU missions. Naruto is happy to oblige. It works well. 

Katsumi enjoys tracing every line of every one of the seals on his body. Likes that he lets her take the lead whenever she wants, likes that he looks at her like she’s something otherworldly when she straddles him and runs her nails down his torso. She likes that he has a filthy mouth, something she never really expected from him, but really should have. She likes the way he can make her laugh even when he’s driven her half mad with pleasure. 

They become a couple within a few months of living together. They still don’t see each other often despite living together, but Katsumi doesn’t mind. She likes how low maintenance they are. With how busy their lives are, she thinks it’s the best they’ll be able to manage anyway. 

She sees Iruka-Sensei far more than she ever has before. She’d forgotten how close the man is to Naruto. She isn’t sure she likes it at first. Remembers the days of having to fight to keep from covering her ears at his yelling. How it made her want to cry because she hated the noise. She’s wary of him and it takes six months before that uncertainty fades way. He doesn’t yell near as much now. She likes him more now that she’s not his student. 

Naruto moves fast, she discovers, when it comes to relationships. Likely a product of having so few positive ones growing up. Asks her to marry him within a year and a half of dating and Katsumi’s brain goes blank for a moment because at no point did she actually expect a proposal for whatever reason. She’d figured the fact they were so busy with their work would cause that to be put on the back burner indefinitely. She manages, barely, not to Shushin away in panic and agrees with a shaky smile. 

The wedding gets planned mostly by Ino and Sakura. Katsumi and Naruto are content to let them handle that, with some help from Naruto’s trio of lunatic genin. It’s a far grander wedding than Katsumi was expecting. Especially considering the budget they were operating on. The fact Naruto has been officially declared Tsunade’s successor probably contributed to that. 

Marriage to Naruto is great until he’s the hokage. Then Katsumi learns just what exactly being a Hokage’s wife entails. She’s twenty-five and sees her husband maybe twice a month. She’s still in ANBU, has no intentions of leaving, and he’s so busy with being Hokage that there’s times she wonders if he even remembers he’s married. 

Katsumi keeps her complaints to herself. They’ve always been busy in their relationship, it’s nothing new. Now it’s just worse. When Naruto asks her to retire from ANBU, They end up in a shouting match in his office. She likes ANBU. it’s something that’s hers. She fits there. No one judges her for her more aggressive tendencies. Naruto wants her to train a genin team. Wants her to be in the village as more than just a shadow. Katsumi snarls and rages and agrees to semi-retirement. Only if she passes a team though. Naruto isn’t happy but he agrees. 

She fails three teams in quick succession. The first had no concept of teamwork. The second was incompetent and a waste of time. The third understood the importance of teamwork in theory, but failed to implement it. Katsumi inadvertently develops the same reputation for failing teams that Kakashi had. Naruto is not impressed. She finally passed the fourth team and she’s not happy about it. The girl argues with her teammates all day, boy one is an idiot, and boy two looks like he wishes he could be anywhere else but training. She’s not happy with them. Still, they’re her responsibility now and she’s going to see them excel whether they want to or not. 

She and Naruto see each other a bit more now that she’s not Fox. Which is good. It improves their as of late rocky relationship, even if she hates teaching her genin team from hell. His were so much better. Much cuter and less fucking stupid. 

She’s twenty-eight when the first kid comes and things get rough between her and Naruto again. She’s not about to be a housewife, not that she has an issue with housewives, but she can’t handle not working. Can’t deal with not being a shinobi. So after her maternity leave ends, she drags a crib into the Hokage’s office, hands Naruto their son’s travel bag, and sets the kid in his lap. Tells him she’s been cleared for missions and that she’s taking one. That starts an argument. Naruto claims he’s too busy, that the office is no place for their kid. Katsumi just tells him to place seals on the crib so their son won’t hear any shouting if meeting take a less than civil turn and that he’s going to spend time with the kid. Even if it has to be while he’s working. She doesn’t mind that she has to come second to the job of being Hokage. She won’t let her child come second too, though. Naruto will spend time with their son one way or another. 

Luckily, he concedes, and she goes on missions again. She takes far less missions than before. Just enough to keep herself from losing her mind from being stuck in the village too long. They make it work. 

Their son is joined by a second son three years later and the process starts again. Katsumi stops going on missions altogether finally, and focuses on teaching the older of the pair things a shinobi should know. He’s smart with too much energy and a bad temper so she makes sure he has an outlet. Does the same with the second boy when he’s old enough. 

In his free time, Naruto teaches them fuinjutsu and traps. Their older son doesn’t have the patience for fuinjutsu, but he likes traps. The younger could sit and practice calligraphy all day. The older son certainly takes more after her in the skills department. Likes her swords and likes the water and likes being sneaky. Katsumi doesn’t have a favorite child, but she will admit it’s nice that at least one of her sons takes after her. 

It’s a good life. A nice one. Katsumi loves Naruto even if they butt heads occasionally. She loves her sons more than anything and would gleefully burn the world down for them. She isn’t a fan of being the Hokage’s wife, but she loves being Naruto’s wife. There’s a difference there, she thinks. One is a support role she’s required to play, the other is a position she happily assumed. Katsumi may not be overjoyed with the first, but she’s content with the second. She thinks that was always how it was going to be with him though. Duty comes first in a shinobi village, after all. She understands that more than anything else. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So truthfully, I’m not thrilled with how this one turned out, I will probably rewrite it when I have more time/inspiration, for now, I hope y’all enjoy it though! Next pairing au will be either Shikamaru or Itachi cus I’m just in a pairing mood lately


	53. Hunting Down Toddlers Is A Headache

Satoshi is fucking tired. Four months away from the village. Four months away from his home and his two year old daughter. He left her with Genma. Hopefully, that’s where she still is. 

She’s not. There’s a note on the door of Genma’s apartment saying to check with Gai. Satoshi can feel the migraine building, he already knows this is going to be a long fucking day. 

Gai is gone. No note. So he asks the neighbors. Gai apparently had his kid working on Taijutsu and running and Kami, his poor daughter is two. Hopefully, Gai knows a two year old can’t keep up with him. One neighbor mentions seeing Anko with his kid. Alright. Time to find Anko. 

Anko isn’t at her apartment. So he checks T&I. Ibiki doesn’t look thrilled to see him. Mentions something about being sorry for the ink stain that might be on Katsumi’s head and tells him Anko went on a missiontwo weeks ago. Fuck. 

He checks with Ebisu. Anko probably hasn’t left Katsumi with Ebisu, the two don’t get along, but it’s worth a shot. Ebisu looks like he wants to throttle him. Tells him he doesn’t have Katsumi, but to check with Tsume. 

Tsume also does not have his kid. None of her clan does. He gets scolded for losing his pup though. Soundly and repeatedly from multiple Inuzukas. Apparently the clan has opinions over how he’s raising his daughter. At least one of the older members told him he saw her with Raidou. 

Raidou is gone. Of course. Why wouldn’t he be? At least there’s a note this time. Fuck. Why is his kid in the ANBU HQ? Who thinks that’s where you leave a kid?

Wolf goes into HQ and he is pissed. Finds Dog in the cafeteria, holding his pissed off and teething daughter like she’s a bomb while Cat poking her cheek like he’s trying to tell if she’s real or not. He’s going to kill Raidou if his kid has been bounced between ANBU operatives in HQ. Dog really shouldn’t be anywhere near children. Cat probably shouldn’t be either. 

Dog practically throws Katsumi at him when he tells them to give him his daughter. Wolf looks his kid over and is pleased to see she’s fine. Pissed off, certainly, but healthy enough. No ink stains either. He’s less thrilled at what she’s saying. 

“Fucking Damnit! Fucking Dammit!”

Who the fuck taught his kid that? Great. Now he has to track down and murder whoever was being a bad influence. He bets it was Anko. It’s almost always Anko. 


	54. Resolutions and Faith

Sai lands hard on what he thinks is a giant rock pile. Dickless was not wrong when he said he didn’t know where the anchoring seal would take him. The land of Earth. He is in Iwa. That’s not good. He is alone in Iwa territory and his team may be getting killed by the Tobi person. This is bad. 

Sai takes stock of his injuries. Mostly bruises and cuts. His ankle may be broken as well from the bad landing. It is not the worst he’s suffered from a mission gone badly. He will survive them. He needs to get out of Iwa and back to his team however. Quickly. Without being captured or causing the fourth shinobi war. This is not good. 

Midget is a good leader. He likes to think they have properly bonded now that Root is gone and she trusted him enough to take him on this mission with her. He does not want to fail at completing his part of the mission that she gave him. But with his location he does not think he will be able to help. He will just have to settle for not being the reason Iwa decides to go to war with Konoha over. Midget would likely be annoyed with him if he did that. 

He will have to be careful. Travel at night and hide during the day. He needs to know where exactly in The Land Of Earth he is though. If he’s closer to the land of Grass or the land Of Wind. Either border will carry its own problems for crossing. The land of Grass has Iwa’s military in it, pacing the land of Fire border like hungry dogs. The land of Wind is a desert. And Suna is no where near the border between the two nations. He would be on his own that way. 

Dickless will succeed in sealing the statue. He succeeded in removing his silence seal. He will succeed in this. Ugly and Midget will succeed in the fight against Tobi. They are intelligent and strong. They will not fail. Sai thinks this feeling is what Ino calls  _faith._

Now he just has to succeed in this. Just has to make it back to Konoha. To safety. To his  friends.  He can do it. He will do it. He has reasons now, beyond just orders, to do so. 


	55. An Uzumaki’s Gambit

Naruto is scrambling. He needs to get back to his team and quickly. He needs to handle this fucking rock and get Gaara down too. Fuck. Gaara is floating on some kinda seal that Naruto only needs to glance at to know he won’t be able to set foot in it unless he wants to be in the same place as his friend. Shit. It’d taken him longer than he’d liked to even get into the fucking cave. The door has a seal on it that was almost elegant in its complexity. It’s something he would have done if he’d really wanted to keep people out. 

He ignores completely the holographic images of the people doing the extraction. They can go to hell. He doesn’t give a fuck about them or their threats or anything else. They aren’t here and he has a job. 

He is almost possessed as he paints his fuinjutsu. It’s the biggest piece of fuinjutsu he’s ever made and it makes his blood sing and his chakra hum in excitement as he works. This will work. This is a masterpiece and it will work and he and his friends will be alright. This will be the end before anything can even begin. 

Truthfully, he wants to be fighting beside his team. It is killing him to not be there with them. This is important though. He’s the only one that can do it and Katsumi looked nearly desperate when she told him to do this no matter what. To see it through to the end. So he will. Whatever it takes, he will get this done. 

Half way through the fuinjutsu he sees an even more brilliant solution than before. One he can’t believe he hadn’t thought of. Fuck keeping it in place. Fuck destroying it. Fuck tucking it away in a container. Fuck all that. They don’t need to do that. They only need to make it impossible for it to be used. He can do that. He is still able to readjust it. So he does. He pours ink and blood and chakra— his, the kyuubi’s, it doesn’t matter— into his task. He works until his fingers ache and his head is swimming and he’s seeing the world through the red haze of corrosive chakra. 

Naruto is near manic as he puts the last of the ink down. He shoves as much chakra as he can into the seal as he activates it. Has to grit his teeth to keep from screaming as his body overloads with the Kyuubi’s chakra. Ignores the deep, menacing voice in his head demanding to be released. It’s over as quickly as it began and there’s an unnatural silence as Naruto kneels on the water stone with his head against the ground, panting with exertion. 

The Ichibi’s chakra is pouring back out of the statue and Naruto has a whole new problem. Fuck. He made it impossible for the Gedo statue to hold a bijuu’s chakra by permanently forcing the statue open, so to speak. Now he has to take the seal Gaara is on apart and force the Ichibi back into him. Fuck. He hopes Gaara is still alive or they’re going to have a rampaging Ichibi to deal with next. Naruto exhales one deep breath and goes to work. He has to do this. All this has to count for something.


	56. Survivor’s Guilt

Naruto stumbles back to the village, exhausted and bloody with Sakura’s limp form held tightly in his grasp. The Suna team had patched her up as best they could, but they weren’t medics and Gaara was barely hanging on. Naruto is the only member of his team left and he’d run as fast as he could to get Sakura back to the village and to Tsunade for treatment. He has no fucking idea where Sai and Katsumi are, but the seals were activated. Which means they could be literally anywhere. Fuck. Hopefully they’ll be able to get back. Katsumi has her summons, she’ll be able to send a message. He has no idea if Sai has a way to do the same. He hopes he does. He can’t worry about that now though, Sakura has to get to a hospital and now. 

He yells out his identification number and Sakura’s and the mission code to Izumo and Kotetsu at the gate and keeps moving. If they didn’t get it, they can track him down later. He nearly knocks the doors of the hospital down in his haste to get there. The medics are all over him as soon as the shock of his arrival fades and Sakura is being pulled from his arms and medical terms he doesn’t know are being yelled out. 

He’s pulled into a different room and doesn’t fight the medics as they go through the motions of checking him for injuries. Other than chakra exhaustion, he’s fine. the Kyuubi healed just about everything. Not even a scar left. Just needs to rest until his chakra recovers. He can’t though. Chakra exhaustion or not, he’s practically vibrating with nervous, panicked energy. As soon as they say he can go, he’s gone. Straight to Baa-chan to get her to go fix Sakura. She has to be able to fix her. 

He slams the door to Baa-chan’s office open and doesn’t even glance at the other people in it, just focuses straight on to Tsunade’s shocked face, “Baa-Chan! Sakura is hurt and she needs you! And– and Sai and Katsumi are gone and it’s my fault—“

“Naruto! Calm down! What the hell is going on?” Tsunade slams her hands down in the desk hard enough to crack it. Kakashi-Sensei, Shikamaru’s Otou-San, and the scary Chuunin exam guy from the first test are all there and Staring at him in utter disbelief. 

“The– the mission. We completed it. The stupid rock is sealed for now and Gaara isn’t dead or wasn’t dead. But– but the Tobi guy was there and he had some kinda freaking sharingan and Sakura got beat up really badly, and Sai and Katsumi are gone!” Naruto is panting as he tries to explain better. 

“What do you mean Sai and Katsumi are gone? Do you mean they’re dead?” Tsunade’s brown eyes are boring into his blue ones. 

“No! The Tobi guy could use his sharingan to pull people to other dimensions, dattebayo. So I made an anchoring seal to keep the team here in this one. But I didn’t have time to figure out how to tell it where to take them, dattebayo. And the seals on Sai and Katsumi were activated and they’re gone.”

“You don’t know where they are?” Shikamaru’s otou-San’s eyes are dark and look sharper than Kunai. 

“No! I already said, the seals didn’t have a location instruction on them. They only were designed to keep them here in this dimension! They could be anywhere, dattebayo.” Naruto stares wide eyed and panicked at the small audience. Kakashi-Sensei is standing stiller than a statue and Naruto doesn’t think he’s breathing. 

Tsunade purses her lips, “Redraw the goddamn seal, and someone get me Jiraiya! I have a Chuunin to keep alive.”

Naruto scrambles out of the way as Tsunade storms out without another word. The Chuunin exam proctor guy and Shikamaru’s otou-San leave together immediately, heads tilted towards each other and talking rapidly. 

Kakashi-Sensei stares at him and asks one thing, “Naruto, this seal, you said all it does is keep them in this dimension. Does that mean it could have killed them?”

Naruto chokes at the thought, he’d made sure it wouldn’t. He just hadn’t had time to make a line of instructions for where they needed to reappear, “No, dattebayo. Sensei, I swear I made sure it wouldn’t. Katsumi-Chan said to make sure it wouldn’t kill them. Not that I needed her to tell me that, dattebayo.”

“Did they know it wouldn’t send them home?” Kakashi-Sensei’s voice is soft and distant. 

“Yeah, I warned them. Katsumi-Chan insisted she get the seal first in case it killed her, that way she was the only one at risk, dattebayo. She said Sakura was in charge if it did.” Naruto is babbling. Everything he remembers about that mission and Katsumi’s orders running rampant through his mind. 

Kakashi-Sensei doesn’t say anything else, just puts his hand on Naruto’s shoulder for a moment before walking out in silence. Naruto is left standing in the empty office. Alone. Just like he was when he finished dealing with Gaara and the Ichibi, because Sakura was practically dead already. Fuck. Naruto needs Tsunade to save Sakura and he needs Sai and Katsumi to be found. Fuck. This is all his fault. His seals were on them. He left them alone. He’s the jinchuuriki. The Akatsuki are after people like him. It’s all his fault. 


	57. Only The Dead Left To Witness

The compound has been quiet in the years since the water filled it and the gates closed. The ocean has a way of cleansing things. They’d all known that in life, in death it seems it cleansed away all but their spirits. None of them knew why. Why they were waiting and watching. Why they’ve yet to move on. So Tsuna managed to take her younger boy and run. If they were wise, they’d never return to Kiri and it’s traitorous people. The spirits left behind are grimly satisfied by the knowledge that, in the end, Kiri had failed. 

When the water washes away for the first time in decades and the gate opens just enough for one person to slip through, the spirits go still. So this is what they were waiting for. The spirits can see Tsuna’s mouth on the girl’s face as she walks. The shape of her eyes. Not the right height or the right eye color, but they know, just by looking at her, that this is their legacy and she’s come to claim her inheritance. 

She’s no wilting flower. They can see that, Konoha hitai-ate and fancy kimono aside. They can taste the saltwater and fury that bleeds off her skin. Can hear a war drum heart beat in her chest. Tsuna’s granddaughter, little Satoshi’s daughter. They can see everything the clan was in life echoing out from this girl. 

They reach out and touch her one by one as she passes them. She can’t feel it, but they can. This is her introduction after all. It’s tradition that each new clan member born is held by everyone else. She may be late, but she still deserves her proper introduction to the clan. Needs those bonds established. Even if she doesn’t know they’re there. 

She looks reverent as she walks through the compound and more than one spirit wishes they could speak to her and tell her to quit acting like it’s the Daimyo’s palace. It’s home. No need to be careful here. This place has been quiet long enough. 

Each spirit urges her to take something as she looks through the homes. Take my dress, take that necklace, take that sword, take that scroll. There’s no one left but her to have it. Only clan and pack are worthy of their belongings and she is the only one left who qualifies as both. 

The clan trails after her as she goes to the meeting house. Urge her forward with hands on her back until she finds the storage room. Until she finds the crown jewels of the clan. Watching her read scroll after scroll, whispering their names and tracing her fingers over the drawings that were done of them makes them feel as if, just for a moment, she’s breathed life back into them. As if they’re being introduced to her, instead of the other way around. She reads the stories with the same wonder and fascination every child of the clan had when hearing them for the first time. It makes the elders and the mothers smile indulgently at the girl. 

The clan tries to nudge her towards the techniques. Unless Tsuna somehow managed to memorized every single one, the girl needs to learn them. They’re hers and she needs to learn to wield blood and water and steel. Needs to learn just how an Ishihara puts fear into everyone that makes the mistake of standing against them. They can see the longing in her eyes. She even reaches for one for a moment before withdrawing her hand. The kimono sleeve slips back just enough to show them the chakra suppression seal on her arm and the entire clan shifts and snarls in fury. How dare someone place those on one of them. How dare anyone deny one of their pups the right to master their techniques. 

The clan watches her leave again, taking nothing with her and knows in the bones they no longer have that this pup will come back. That their legacy won’t be left to rot and be forgotten under the ocean anymore. That even now, Kiri has lost. Their legacy will be so far beyond Kiri’s reach that they don’t even mind that this pup makes her home in the trees, so far away from sea. Let her. She is the clan now. She decides what’s right for it. 


	58. Katsumi and Yuma Smut: Prove It

Things have a pleasant haze to them as Katsumi reclines on Yuma’s couch. She’s had a lot to drink and she can tell Yuma has too. He’s sitting in the chair beside her with his head tilted back and eyes closed, sake bottle held loosely in one hand. She hopes she’s not the only one awake now. 

“Yuma! Hey, um I have a question.” Katsumi grins lazily when one purple eye opens and his head tilts to look at her better. 

“Hmm?”

“So that lady. The one you got naked with? Did you  _fuck her_ fuck her or did you just get her all worked up and then killed her?” Katsumi giggles at the slow blink she gets in response. 

“Snapped her neck while I was fucking her,” Yuma shrugs and takes a sip of the sake. 

“So does that mean you’re good or bad in bed?” Katsumi thinks killing the person in bed probably is bad sex etiquette. 

“You wanna find out?” Yuma asks her like he’s asking what time of day it is. 

“Don’t wanna get my neck snapped too,” Katsumi giggles even more. 

“Oh, you wouldn’t have to worry about that, Foxy. I can play nice,” he draws the word  _ nice _ out like a hiss. 

Katsumi rolls onto her feet, swaying slightly and holding her own sake bottle tight in her hand. She’s well aware she shouldn’t be doing this, but she feels good and she wants to keep feeling good. And Yuma sounds like he wants to help with that. So she moves to stand between his legs and looks down at him curiously, “Prove it.”

Yuma suddenly gets a much more predatory and alert look to him when he hears that, “You want me to prove it?”

“Yes.” Katsumi bares her teeth just a little as a challenge. 

Yuma’s sake is on the side table and hers is out of her hand and his hands are resting on low on her hips in the time it takes her to blink. She has to put her hands on his shoulders to keep her balance when he pulls her forward until her legs hit the chair. She’d already taken her flak jacket off earlier to get more comfortable, and she can’t help but twitch slightly at the feeling of his hands on her skin when he slowly works his hands under her shirt and mesh armor to push them up just a little, purple eyes never leaving hers as he does this, “Trust me?”

Katsumi feels lightheaded already and is utterly fixated on his hands on her and she nods once. Feeling his lips press gently to the soft skin over her stomach is a shock, it makes her abdomen muscles twitch involuntarily and her breathing hitch. Yuma’s hands run up and down her sides soothingly as his mouth traces a path up her stomach, teeth grazing skin lightly every so often. She’s not prepared for his hands to tighten suddenly on her waist or for him to stop kissing her stomach and pull her onto his lap, switching it around so his legs are between hers. 

Katsumi blinks in surprise when she’s suddenly face to face with him and his hands are holding so tightly to her thighs she wonders if there will be bruises, “Yuma?”

“You sure you want this, Foxy?” Yuma murmurs it so calmly even as his eyes rove wildly over her face. 

Katsumi’s heart is beating out of her chest and she feels warm all over and she doesn’t know if it’s from the sake or the way he’s looking at her and she really doesn’t care. Katsumi brings her mouth down to stop a hairsbreadth away from his and answers back just as calmly, “yes.”

Yuma closes the distance between their mouths as soon as the word is out and it’s nothing like the gentle kisses he’d left on her stomach. He kisses her like it’s the most important thing in the entire world. Kisses her like he’s trying his hardest to make her forget anything else but what it’s like to kiss him. He nips at her bottom lips and doesn’t flinch when she grazes his with her teeth in response. 

Katsumi shudders slightly and her hands twist into his hair when his mouth moves from away from hers and works it’s way across her jawline. Katsumi makes a whining noise in the back of her throat and that seems to set Yuma off a little. He’s pulling her shirt and mesh armor off together quickly and lifting her up, one arm behind her back and hand twisting in her half falling down ponytail while the other grips the back of one of her thighs. Katsumi has to wrap her arms around his neck and hold tightly with her other leg as he walks them to his bedroom. His mouth works on a spot just below her ear as he carries her and Katsumi digs her nails into his back through his shirt. 

Katsumi makes a noise of displeasure when he sets her down on the bed and backs off. Yuma is still standing between her bent legs, with his arms on either side of her waist and he’s staring at her in the low light with pupils that are blown wide, “I’m gonna make you feel so good, Katsumi. Gonna makes you feel fucking amazing.”

Katsumi’s eyes nearly roll back in her headwhen he brings his mouth to one of her breasts while the hand that isn’t working on the zipper of her pants rubs circles on her other nipple with his thumb. Katsumi’s legs wrap around his waist of their own accord and try to pull him closer. 

His hand moves to brace beside her head and His mouth leaves her breast and moves up near neck to nip lightly at her ear and he laughs lightly when her nails dig viciously into his back, “Shh, I have you. I told you I’d make you feel good, didn’t I?”

He pulls back and steps away, pulls her pants and panties down her legs as he goes, before kneeling down at the end of the bed and pulling her by the hips to the very edge of the bed. With her legs over his shoulders and him eye level with her core, Katsumi feels extremely exposed. She pushes herself up into her elbows and looks down at him. Purple eyes meet green, and then his mouth is right  there and Katsumi’s right leg jerks involuntarily at the contact. This is new. Katsumi has no idea how to react to this but she’s not sure she cares, it feels amazing and she can’t help the noises coming out of her throat or the way her body is moving like she’s not in control of it. Her head tips back and her eyes slide shut and she’s not sure when it happened but she has a hand in his hair again and it’s pulling desperately as his tongue hits the spot that makes her whole body jerk like she’s been electrocuted. 

Katsumi is vaguely aware that she’s practically chanting his name but really could not give less of a fuck about how needy she must sound when he’s making her feel like this. She has no idea how long this goes on, just that she feels like she’s going to lose her mind if he stops. Her entire body is tense and shaking and she feels like she’s strung tighter than any ninja wire. His fingers are inside her and he’s sucking on her clit and Katsumi is actually going to start crying if he stops. She needs him to keep going. She’s making choking noises and babbling mindlessly and she is so goddamned close. 

Her eyes really do roll back into her head when he finally pushes her over the edge and her whole body spasms as the tension is released. Yuma doesn’t stop though, just keeps on with his mouth and his fingers as she curses and calls his name and writhes on the bed. He keeps on until she’s pulling on his hair and needs him to stop because it’s too much. 

Finally, he pulls away, and there’s the sound of a zipper being undone and clothes falling to the floor as Katsumi tries to regain control of her breathing. Yuma kisses her up her stomach and breaths before kissing her on the mouth again. Katsumi’s not sure why, but tasting herself on his mouth is oddly attractive and she’s still too far gone from her orgasm to really worry about that. She twitches involuntarily again and inhales sharply when she feels his dick against her. 

Yuma breaks the kiss and presses his forehead against hers, “You still want it?” 

“Yes.” Katsumi’s not sure she could even contemplate saying no right now. 

“Fuck, you are so fucking perfect. Tasted so goddamn good, you know that? Fuck seeing you come was fucking amazing,” Yuma’s mouth moves to be beside her ear and he’s speaking in a rougher voice than she’s ever heard as she feels him position himself. 

He pushes into her slowly, gives her time to adjust to the stretch and it makes her growl just a bit in frustration. She wants him inside of her. Wants it  _ now _ . She wraps her legs around his waist and pulls as hard as she can, but Yuma only laughs into her ear quietly and braces so she can’t do that, hands going to her hips and holding them down tightly, “Uh-uh, Katsumi, patience. I promise you’ll get everything you want.”

Katsumi growls her frustration louder and nips him sharply on the shoulder when he slows down even more and pull back out just a little. He’s teasing her and Katsumi can’t stand it. She wants everything he can give her and she wants it  _ now _ . From his quiet huff of amusement, he knows it too. 

She feels him shift just slightly and one of his hands is gripping her ass tightly and before she can curse at him and demand more, he’s slid all the way inside of her and Katsumi’s snarl of frustration turns into a gasp of shock as her back arches. Yuma sets a quick pace, pushing deep into her and adjust the angle each time until he hits a spot that makes Katsumi’s moans hit a new octive and the hand that was squeezing her ass has moved so his fingers are rubs circles on her clit. Katsumi is strung tight again and she can feel herself getting closer with every thrust combined with the circles he’s making on her clit and she can barely think. He’s speaking in her ear, in a rough, fast tone, filthy things that makes her squeeze tightly around him each time he pulls back out. 

Her vision goes white the next time she comes and all she can do is drag her nails down his back harshly and tighten her legs around him. Yuma’s pace goes even faster, before the rhythm becomes broken and stuttering and his face presses into the side of her neck and he groans low in his throat as his hips jerk once, then twice before stilling as he comes too. Katsumi feels warm and satiated and very much content to keep her legs wrapped around him for awhile. It’s just too much effort to move as she tries to catch her breath. Her whole body feels relaxed and boneless though and after a moment Yuma gently pulls out of her and collapses beside her on his back. 

Katsumi can’t help the noise she makes at the loss of contact. Yuma is breathing hard beside her, but still manages a laugh at the noise and uses one strong arm to pull her over onto his chest. 

Katsumi’s too tired to fight that and just curls up under his arm with her head on his shoulder. Hums happily when she feels him playing with her hair. She thinks he says something, but she’s too tired to register it and is already falling into sleep. Whatever he said can wait until morning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, um, I blame being drunk for this one, hope y’all enjoyed it! Never actually written detailed smut before so hope it wasn’t too bad!


	59. Abandoned Scene That Almost Made It To Canon

Because nothing in her life is capable of going right without something else going horribly, terribly wrong, she really should have expected this. Really, she’s not sure why she’s shocked. This is really just run of the mill for how her life works. Really shouldn’t be even marginally surprised at this point. 

Being Slammed into a wall of an empty alleyway in broad daylight the one time she doesn’t have a person or her Ninken with her? Really she should have expected it. Being drugged and knocked out? Obviously was going to happen. Being dragged by a pair of blank masked Root operatives to Danzo’s secret base? Least surprising thing to happen to her honestly. 

Sitting across a desk from the fucker like this is a business meeting and she’s not half drugged out of her mind? A bit more shocking. Honestly, she expected being chained to a wall or something if she went and got abducted.

“Ishihara Katsumi. You and I are past due for a conversation.” Danzo says it like she isn’t plotting his demise. 

Her tongue feels a bit heavy even as the drugs begin to wear off, but she still manages to speak, “Busy person, Shimura-Sama. Should have made an appointment.”

“Insolent child. Clearly an unfortunate byproduct of being around Hatake so long. No matter. That will be rectified. I’ve heard quite a few interesting reports about you, Ishihara. You would benefit quite well from joining my foundation.”

Katsumi blinks slowly at him, “Dunno how.”

He continues speaking like she didn’t say anything, “From the reports, you seem to have visions of sorts. With past and future knowledge. That is incredibly valuable for keeping Konoha strong. Your knowledge will be put to good use here and your existing skills will be honed further than Hatake could ever take them.”

Katsumi snorts a little, “What? You want me to read tea leaves for you? Sorry, I don’t do fortune telling.”

“Clearly no one ever taught you respect. I’d assumed My operatives would have rectified that while training you. You will share your knowledge, girl, or have it ripped from your mind.”

The killing intent leaking off the old man would be far more intimidating if she wasn’t drugged up, “Unfortunately my brain is so stupidly classified only three people are actually allowed to know what’s in it. You didn’t make the cut.”

Danzo gives her what she thinks is an ugly approximation of a smile, “Right now, child, you are being offered a choice. Willingly share your knowledge and join my foundation, in which you will be pushed to new heights of power you haven’t dreamt of, or have your mind torn apart.”

Katsumi pulls her shit together enough to increase her hearing. Enough to count heartbeats. She’s still too drugged to do much more and this is rapidly getting on her nerves. 


	60. Bad Things Come In Threes

Kakashi can see Tanaka fall from the corner of his eye as he fights the pein that seems capable of repelling and attracting objects. Can feel Katsumi’s killing intent flood the area. Stronger than he’s ever felt it. Oh, she’s beyond pissed. That’s good, he thinks. She’s most dangerous pissed off. He worries for her, but she’s capable of holding her own and he can’t get to her to help yet. Isn’t sure he’ll be able to. 

The smell of blood and death and ozone is nearly overwhelming as he fights. As his little apprentice (not anymore, she’s a jounin now, his equal) fights. His (Obito’s) sharingan registers her summoning what look like otters? He doesn’t have time to question that or the sudden massive flood of water. Or the eerie noises coming from the animals. He needs to focus on this fight. Then he can help her. 

He ends up on the opposite side of Pein. It gives him a clear view of what’s happening with his student. Tanaka is dead and Sai is circling the air wildly and there’s fucking otters climbing relentlessly up a different pein even as it fights them. They’re yanking the rods out of the corpse as they go. He’s having words with Katsumi about when she got those little monsters after this. Not that he’s annoyed by it. He just has questions. 

Even as he continues his own fight he keeps an eye on Katsumi as she fights a different Pein alone. Calls her name as her water drags it down below the surface. She’s just standing there. Bloody and wild eyed and clearly at her limit. She doesn’t even glance at him. Fuck. He attacks his opponent again and is thrown back even further. 

His heart stutters and his eyes widen in panic as he watches her just keep standing there, even as her pein approaches. There’s an unsettling, resigned air around her and he’s suddenly more focused on her than his own battle. He has a terrible, terrible idea of what she’s going to do. Rin had that same air around her before she ran into his chidori. 

He knows instinctually what jutsu she’s going to preform before her hands even come together. _No._ He’s moving before he can think, chidori forming in his hand as he tries to get there before she does it. Tries to take away her reason for it. Her teeth are bared and bloody and she doesn’t hesitate. The hand seals form and he can see the widening of her eyes and her teeth gritting together momentarily even as he runs (Not fast enough, never fast enough). Sees all too clearly the life leaving her eyes. She’s gone before she hits the ground and Kakashi sees  _ red .  _


	61. Intel Gathering For A Spoon-wielding Wife

“Katsumi moved into her house today,” Shikaku keeps his tone neutral as he watches his brooding son play shogi against himself. 

“Yeah. I know. Her things are all gone.” 

“Didn’t take you for the type to avoid things. Could have sworn you were raised differently,” Shikaku pushes. He has an inkling of what happened and so does Yoshino. She’ll shake the answers out of Shikamaru soon if he doesn’t get his son talking. 

“What’s there to avoid? She moved out. We all knew it was coming.” Shikamaru’s eyes are fixated on the shogi board. 

“You didn’t visit. A lot of people dropped by to help her set up. Except you,” Shikaku muses. 

“Was busy.”

“Cloud watching?” The kid was staring at clouds before the sun was up and hadn’t moved from his spot except for the shogi board. 

“Yes.”

“So. What went wrong?” Shikaku’s over this dancing around. Sometimes the easiest way out is through. 

“What.”

“You and Katsumi. Ten years down the drain. Why?”

“We broke up.”

Shikaku rolls his eyes at the back of his stubborn son’s head, “I’m aware. Why?”

“Reasons.”

“Which were?”

“I didn’t give her enough attention and she didn’t love me.”

“You realize those two things are probably directly correlated,” Shikaku hates when he has to deal with emotional issues. Give him a complicated tactical problem over this any day. 

Shikamaru gives him a lethal look over his shoulder. At least his son’s eyes are still capable of looking at something other than the damn shogi board. Too bad he’s even less chatty today than Katsumi when she first wakes up. 

“So you fucked it up. And she walked away?” That’s what it sounds like probably happened between them. A week of awkward silence from Shikamaru and Katsumi hiding in what he assumes has been ANBU HQ has lead to Shikaku’s patience wearing thin. 

“Guess so. Said something I shouldn’t have when we ended up on the topic. Probably didn’t help things.”

“What was that?” Shikaku is going to have to hide Shikamaru from Yoshino if it’s bad enough. He hates these types of things. Telling the kid to get his head out of his ass and date katsumi if he wanted to was bad enough. 

“During the Suna invasion. I decided I’d marry her instead of some other girl. Most of my decisions have been around her anyway. I told her that,” Shikamaru shifts a little and hunches his shoulders. 

“You told her that exactly?” Shikaku is silently relieved he won’t need a new heir. That doesn’t sound as bad as he thought it would be. 

“...Not quite. I just said it. I was drinking. It sounded like I decided I was going to marry her out of convenience.” 

There it is. That’s why Yoshino may kill him. Fuck. Shikaku sighs, “And that’s why she broke up with you?”

“No. It was mutual. I didn’t try hard enough and she didn’t know how she felt. It’s what it is.” Shikamaru snarls it as he moves another piece on the board. 

“Learn from it and do better the next time you decide to date a girl. Not all of them are as tolerant as Katsumi. And don’t let ten years of friendship die because of this. She’s still a comrade,” Shikaku warns as he turns to report back his new intel to Yoshino. 


	62. A Motivated Nara Never Fails

The lady has a blank face and impassive green eyes that rake over them like she’s already disregarded them. Akiko is offended by that, but she gets it. They’re the clan class. None of them are actually expected to learn kenjutsu. They have their clan techniques. 

She recognizes Katsumi-Sensei from the compound. She lived with the head family for as long as Akiko can remember. She’s seen her flow through kenjutsu like she’s made of water. Akiko likes how easy and effortless it looks. She wants to know how she does it. 

The first stance looks simple. It’s irritating that she can’t do it right the first time. That Katsumi-Sensei has to correct her on what looks like the simplest thing in the world. She isn’t expecting Katsumi-Sensei to comment when she complains. No one ever does. All Nara’s complain about work. 

“Better a drag now then dead later.”

Akiko gets fixated on that statement, even though she’s smart enough to tell Katsumi-Sensei has forgotten it almost as soon as she’s moved on. Akiko doesn’t though. Her brain works a million kilometers an hour to figure out how to make herself move like Katsumi-Sensei. 

She marches up to Shikaku-sama within a week and glares at the easy going man. 

“Yes, Akiko-chan?” Shikaku-Sama looks mildly amused by her glare. His son watches from the opposite side of the shogi board. 

“Is Katsumi-Sensei here?” She hasn’t seen the woman in a long time. Clearly, she needs help finding her. 

“Katsumi-Sensei?” Shikamaru drawls, one eyebrow raised. 

“Yes. She taught kenjutsu at the academy and I need to speak with her. Is she here?” Akiko is determined. 

“No, she moved out, Akiko-Chan. Why do you need to speak with her?” Shikaku-Sama questions. 

“I want kenjutsu lessons. She’s good at kenjutsu. Where does she live?” Akiko will hunt the woman down if she has too. 

“Opposite side of Konoha. About a five minute walk from the main village. There’s a bunch of flowers in front of the house and you can hear wind chimes in the kitchen. Why do you want to learn Kenjutsu?” Shikaku looks amused. Shikamaru has a funny look on his face. 

“She makes it look easy. All flowing and stuff. I want to move like that,” Akiko wants to be that intimidating too. Katsumi-Sensei looks like she could convince a wildfire to stop burning with just a glare.

“Katsumi-Chan is very busy. She may not agree,” Shikaku-Sama warns her. 

“She will,” Akiko will convince her. 

“She’s not going to go easy on you if she even agrees. It will be a drag,” Shikamaru finally speaks again. 

“‘Better a drag now than dead later’ that’s what she said,” Akiko is very convinced of the soundness of that statement. 

“Well, good luck, and the doors are trapped, so no trying to walk in unless she invites you in, got it?” Shikaku-Sama warns her, but he looks extremely amused.

“Got it. Thank you for helping, Shikaku-Sama,” Akiko bows once and strolls away. She has a house to find and a Kenjutsu Sensei to inform of her new student. 


	63. Inaction Is A Form Of Action

Eight months since Katsumi left. Shikamaru doesn’t often pay attention to things like that. He does now, though. The house is quieter than he remembers since she left. There’s no ninken talking shit. No one flicking shogi pieces at him when they lose. Her bedroom is just a guest room again. Closed up and devoid of the presence he’d grown so used to having in it. It’s an adjustment. There’s more than one time he expects Katsumi to show up and push him over to sleep in the middle of the night. It never happens and he’s well aware it won’t. 

His parents go to visit her at least weekly, he knows that. He knows she wouldn’t blink twice if he comes along with them. His parents keep heavily implying he should. Shikamaru feels like he’s intruding if he does, though. She’s never told him he’s welcome to visit, after all. He’d hardly even seen her on the streets since the break up. 

Akiko becoming her student is interesting. Shikamaru wouldn’t have expected it from Katsumi. She can be standoffish with new situations. Isn’t always friendly to new people. He knows she has limited exposure to kids too. Akiko manages to wrangle lessons out of her though. Tells everyone in the Nara compound who will listen about how awesome “Katsumi-Sensei” is. She still doesn’t come around the compound. Akiko goes to her for training. 

Akiko pouts for three months and trains herself when Katsumi goes off on a mission. She wouldn’t tell the girl what type of mission, something Akiko had complained about for a week. Shikamaru knows from experience the lack of information means ANBU. means if she dies, no one will be informed because she has no blood or legal family left. Hatake Kakashi will be the only exception, because she was his official apprentice. Her name will just appear on the memorial stone one day and her body will only get buried if her team survives to bring it back. One of the many, many reasons Shikamaru always worried so much when he figured out she was part of the shadow corps. 

He’s walking with Temari, here on another diplomatic mission, when he sees her for the first time in months. Holding onto the back of a shinobi he’s seen around the jounin lounge but never actually spoken too. The man is grinning and carrying Akiko too and seems entirely content with his situation. Her fingers and hands are wrapped tightly in bandages and his first instinct is the same as it’s always been: to find how what happened and figure out a way to prevent it from ever happening again. He doesn’t go over to them though. She looks happy. Looks content. Happier than she did the last time they were together. He doesn’t think she’d look that happy if he were to go over to them. 

Her eyes find him and he can read the surprise in them. Can see her look Temari over quickly. Watches her turn her head into the side of the man’s neck and hide her eyes away. That stings a little. He’s not sure if she doesn’t even want to see him or is just hoping he won’t speak to her. It’s hard to tell with her. Ten years of knowing each other, of being able to read her like a book, and he can’t even decipher what the way she looked away meant. 

He forces himself to turn his attention back to the Suna Kunoichi. Better not to linger on things he can’t change. Things he’s not sure  _ how _ to change. Still. Ten years. He never imagined how unpleasant letting it fade would be. How much he doesn’t want it to. He just doesn’t know how to stop it. 


	64. To Lead Is To Suffer

Naruto goes to Baa-Chan. He needs answers. Surely, Kakashi-Sensei can’t just lie like that to his teammates. Surely, Katsumi can’t just disobey orders like that. He feels betrayed by the lies and needs answers. 

Tsunade is in her office when he arrives, walking in without knocking like he always has. She’s working on paperwork as he comes in, without looking up, she asks, “What is it, Naruto?”

“The mission to get Sasuke back, I was told that Sasuke’s teammates weren’t killed, dattebayo. But it was a lie, I don’t understand,” Naruto looks wide eyes at the woman. 

“Hatake made that decision because he deemed it the best solution to the problem,” She doesn’t look up. 

“But why? They weren’t threats, dattebayo! One was an Uzumaki!”

“Who willingly worked for Orochimaru, an enemy of the village. They may not have seemed like threats to you, but each of them presented a potential problem for Konoha. Jūgo of the scales had an uncontrollable temper combined with his use of nature chakra. He was a danger to everyone he came in contact with. Hozuki survived, but he’s not much better, he’s very good at killing and very much enjoys it. It’s unfortunate he survived if you want my honesty, despite the fact he was a victim of Orochimaru. The Uzumaki would never have been allowed to visit Konoha much less join us based on her history with Orochimaru,” Tsunade looks up at him calmly. 

Naruto stares at her aghast, “They weren’t even fighting us anymore, dattebayo!”

“A threat doesn’t stop being a threat just because a battle ends. Why do you think your team chose to work around you instead of  _ with _ you?” Baa-Chan stops writing and leans back in her chair, brown eyes boring into him. 

The question makes Naruto come up short. He hasn’t considered why they would do that. Just that they lied. That they did. He’s only wondered why they lied, not why they worked around him. 

Tsunade answers the question for him, “You were given a field promotion to jounin. Normally, that happens in wartime. Which means those who receive it have already done the things that happened on that mission. They’re used to it and expect it. It’s why field promotions are rare during peacetime. You were promoted to full jounin for three reasons: fuinjutsu, senjutsu, and your part in ending the battle against Pein. Take even one of those away and I wouldn’t have even considered the promotion. They went around you because, frankly, you’ve been given leeway others haven’t and it’s making you a determent on missions. You think being a shinobi is about helping people, sometimes it is, but most of the time, it’s about doing things, sometimes terrible things, for the good of your mission, your comrades, your village. Those three things must always come first. Before your friends in other villages, before your morals, before your comfort. You want to be Hokage still?”

“Of course, dattebayo!”

“Then take this as a learning experience, if your own comrades doubt your ability to think objectively on a mission, if they doubt your ability to place the mission and their safety and the village’s safety above your feelings, do you really think they’d trust you to lead this village? Do you really think you’re the type of person that should wear the hat? I want to see you achieve your dream, but as it stands, I couldn’t in good conscience put your name forward as my successor. You want the hat? I need you to think like a shinobi then, not like a hero in one of Jiraiya’s novels. Have your dreams, have your hope, have your morals, but  _ do not _ put them above the village or your comrades,” Tsunade’s voice is hard and unyielding. 

Naruto deflates at the reprimand. He knows what being a shinobi means. Knows it’s bloody and hard and painful. He loves his village and his comrades and he hates killing. Only does it when he’s in battle and has no other choice. To hear Baa-Chan tell him that he might have to do so outside of a fight, that his own comrades don’t trust his judgement is sobering. It makes him want to plug his ears. 

That he won’t be considered for the hat if he keeps it up? That’s a shock to his system. Until now, he’s always figured being Hokage is about being the strongest, about being willing to die for the village, he hasn’t considered it means making decisions he doesn’t want to make. That it means permitting killing people because they could be a threat later. That it means sending comrades to die on missions that would make his stomach churn. He still wants the Hat, but Naruto has no idea just how heavy it actually is, even after Tsunade’s reprimand. 

He leaves the office with more questions than he came with. 


	65. When A Pup Becomes An Alpha

Kakashi isn’t expecting to be told off by his little Kunoichi. It’s been a long time since those green eyes had glared venomously up at him. The last time she’d been tiny, smaller than all the other genin and she’d been near hysterical as she shouted at him to do his job. This time, she stands at shoulder height to him, and she doesn’t raise her voice. Her fury, her displeasure, is sharp and focused instead of the frantic worry that had given rise to her telling off the first time. His pup isn’t a pup anymore, that much is clear. She doesn’t scurry behind him anymore or look to him for direction unquestioningly. She’s no longer a submissive little pup that obeys thoughtlessly. She’s grown into what Tsume would proudly call an Alpha bitch. 

His smallest pup has taken every lesson he’s given her and every lesson ANBU and her babysitters gave her and turned herself into a Kunoichi to be acknowledged. She even has a little student now. He won’t ever say it, but Naruto could do with following her example. At this rate, he’s not sure it’s going to be the blond that takes the hat. Not that he expects her to take it with half the willingness as Tsunade had. He fully expects a proverbial blood bath if her name were to ever be put forward. 

He may not like getting chewed out by her, may not like being spoken to like he’s a wayward subordinate, but there’s a small part of him that brims with pride at the display. His pup has grown and seeing the result is extremely gratifying. That she thought he was testing her hurts a bit though. He wouldn’t test her like that. He thought she’d known that. 

She Shushins away from him, the third fucking time (Gai will never stop laughing if he finds out), and he’s left staring at the spot she’d been in. Even though she smells like she just showered, he could still pick up on Hyena’s scent and the weak, lingering smell of sex. He files that way in his head and makes a mental note to remind Hyena that if Katsumi doesn’t cut his balls off, Kakashi will if he does anything she doesn’t want. 

Still, She’s not wrong. Naruto has been babied. Kakashi could have handled things better. Should have handled things better. Jiraiya has taught Naruto well, but the man is an idealist too. One that runs from his mistakes on top of it. Naruto has missed key lessons and Kakashi’s done nothing to fix it. Kakashi has to give the girl props. She’s the only one so far to point out, without sugarcoating, the ways they’ve failed with Naruto. Well, at least he didn’t fuck Katsumi up, he thinks that’s a win.

Kakashi shakes his head and glances back towards the direction of the memorial stone, “Ishihara, your daughter turned out better than any of us could have expected. You better be proud if you’re watching. I think she’ll be a shadow Hokage at this rate.”

A shadow Hokage at least, Kakashi is betting. Naruto will need that if he wants to be Hokage. Especially if he can’t come to terms with certain aspects of being a Shinobi. Its sad such things are sometimes necessary, but it is what it is. She’ll be a better one than Danzo ever was, he knows that much. She’ll actually remember the village is more than just an abstract concept and that it’s made up of real people. 


	66. History And Tragedy Go Hand In Hand

This is the legend:

There was once a clan, more saltwater and steel than blood and bone. A clan who loved the ocean the way a bird loves the sky or an otter loves the river. This clan was as unpredictable and unyielding as the ocean it loved. Territorial like wolves and twice as loyal. Who carved out their place in history by being the first clan to join a fledgling village on an island country in the sea. A clan who bled themselves dry for the village until the village tossed them aside. 

This is the nightmare:

There was a clan with sharp teeth and wild eyes who cared for nothing beyond each other. Who would gleefully slaughter anyone who crossed them. Who learned to wield blood like a weapon and were never found alone. A clan with a reputation for tearing throats out and smiling with blood stained teeth afterwards. Once, there was a clan who walked a fine, fine line between bloodlust and protectiveness (Blood spilling is easy to justify when your people, your home, is threatened). Once, there was a clan that made even other Kiri shinobi blanch at their ruthlessness. Even in death, Kiri mothers warn their children that sharp toothed, bloody ghosts will come for them if they aren’t good. 

This is the truth:

There was a clan who loved the ocean, but loved each other more. There was a clan who passed every newborn babe around to each and every member old enough to hold them all so the child could know from the start that there was an entire clan who loved them. There was a clan who had only beaded curtains for front doors, because keeping each other out was unthinkable. There was a clan who worked in pairs because clan stays together, clan fights together, clan dies together. A clan that carved the names of loved ones onto little iron bars to carry them with them whenever they left the village. Carved virtues onto others as a reminder of what they should always be. Strong, brave, loyal. A clan that refused, always, to let their children be sent to the frontlines of war before their teeth had grown. Once, there was a clan who was cut down, but managed, in a last act of defiance, to send a single young Kunoichi and her toddler son away to the dubious safety of the forest, in hopes the leaves would provide cover. Once, there was a clan that drowned their own home with their dying breath. 

Here is the aftermath:

The forest gave shelter at a price. The Kunoichi, grieving one son, a husband, a sister, a clan, takes up a new headband and fights for a home that doesn’t really want her. Whispers stories to the only son she has left, about his father, his brother, his aunts and uncles and everyone who ever held him. Hands him swords and teaches him before his second set of teeth have come in entirely how to use them. Sends him to a too soft academy where he won’t have to kill his friends to graduate (she’ll never admit it, but this is one thing she appreciates about this soft hearted, oceanless place). The son grows knowing he’s not Konoha. Knowing his blood is saltwater and his bones steel. Grows knowing his skills will not be enough to make those around him respect him. Grows knowing his teeth mark him out as not-Konoha. The Kunoichi is dead before the last of his secondary teeth have grown in. The son grows alone from there, too sharp and too mercurial for his peers in the academy to want to befriend. The son does not care. 

Here is the Forgetting:

A mother becomes a name on a stone. A son becomes an orphan. A child becomes a weapon. The child leaves the academy with no one to praise him for passing a graduation exam that Kiri would have scoffed at. The child wears a headband that should make him proud but only makes him bitter because it’s the headband of a village that nearly turned his mother and him away at the gates, a village that looks at him and sees Kiri blood before they see the Konoha Hitai-ate. It’s the only one he can have though, so he wears it proudly on his head, but turns it so the hitai-ate is facing his right side (where his older brother would have stood if he’d lived, according to the mother who’s just a name on a rock now). The boy gets a Sensei who doesn’t look at him like a second class citizen, but isn’t close to him either, and two teammates that flinch at the way the boy bares his teeth whenever he feels anything that’s not apathy (with teeth like his, a smile is easy to confuse with a snarl for those who don’t care to look closely). 

This is the rebirth:

The boy meets a Kunoichi with sharp green eyes and short brown hair who nearly takes his eye out when they spar and the boy decides right then she’s his favorite person. After all, she doesn’t flinch when she sees his teeth, just flashes her own dull ones back. A war passes and the boy is a wolf and the girl is a fox and they become married. A tiny, barely standing, apartment becomes a nice, modest two bedroom apartment near the edge of the village. A daughter comes and the boy-turned-wolf-turned-man whispers promises of protection to the child. The Kunoichi-turned-fox-turned-woman dies and leaves a grieving husband and a crying baby. 

Here is the lesson the boy never learned: 

Water cannot break. It bends and flows and wears obstacles away. It never breaks. The same holds true for those who were born to the clan of saltwater and steel and blood. 

It is a lesson the boy did not learn and when he is left without the green eyed, sharp tongued woman and with only a screaming babe, he breaks. Just enough that he forgets a lesson he  _ had _ been taught: two is a clan and clan is never to be left alone.


	67. More Than Just A Sad Story

Shibata Hana is civilian born. Is small. Is green eyed and sharp tongued and wildfire ferocious. Shibata Hana is a civilian born who grows knowing war just as intimately as her shinobi born peers. Shibata Hana is a civilian born girl that grows into a Nightmare. 

She’s cunning, can dance logic circles around anyone who cares to play her games. Prefers ninja wire and neko-te to more popular methods of fighting. She’s no frontline combatant but she’s ended more than a few of those. Cunning and resolve win out over strength more often than many shinobi are willing to admit. Her methods keep her out of the bingo books, stealth and trickery and webs of metal wire. She may have fire jutsu, may be able to set an entire damned forest ablaze with a breath, but that’s not her style. Too flashy, too unrefined. She prefers the cleanliness of wires choking and cutting life out of fools, prefers to let idiots get too close to her only to let them see her claws are as sharp as her mind. 

Shibata Hana meets Ishihara Satoshi as a genin and takes no small amount of pleasure at winning their first spar. He’s strong and clever and fast, but she’s Shibata Hana and her cunning, her resolve, is greater than his. The way he smiles all sharp teeth and feral eyes afterwards makes her grin back. At twelve she’s been insulted by boys who took issue with the way she wins too often and his immediate admiration is extremely gratifying. 

They become close. Never on the same missions though. He learns infiltration despite being a brutal frontline fighter out of sheer spite because some idiot said he’d be hopeless at it. She takes to assassination because her skillset lends well to it. She becomes Fox before he becomes Wolf and Oinin Butai suits her even better than Assassinations did. She’s Konoha bred through and through and she loves her village with all the ferocity a child born in wartime is capable of. That there’s fools who would betray it makes her mean, makes her ruthless. She never looses a kill. 

Marriage to Ishihara Satoshi happens quickly. Married at eighteen because the third war is still happening and they don’t know if they’ll live long enough to marry in peacetime. It changes little. A new name, a new apartment, a bed that’s often empty on one or both sides because war doesn’t care about personal lives. 

The war ends and Shibata Hana has been Ishihara Hana for nearly two years. She is Fox less than Satoshi is Wolf, but that’s because less people are traitors and cowards in the joy and relief that comes with a war’s end. She becomes mother by accident, really. They’d discussed children but not anytime soon. The pregnancy is one of many happy accidents in the postwar baby boom. In the excitement, it’s easy to forget about replacing the anti-fertility seal on her stomach until she’s staring at a pregnancy test in her apartment’s bathroom after vomiting endlessly on a mission and laughing hysterically. They keep the baby, it’s peacetime now and they’d planned on children anyway and now is as good a time as any. Hana spends her pregnancy planning out how best to ensure the child has the best possible life. Here, her resolve takes precedence over her cunning. She plans relentlessly. Decides, whether Genma likes it or not, he’s the unofficial godfather. He’d be the official one, but she thinks that would send him into a panic. Poor levelheaded kid is terrified of that kind of responsibility. Hana is just kind enough to take pity and leave it at unofficial. 

The baby comes and Hana decides she would happily burn down the village she loves so much for her daughter. Wouldn’t lose a moment’s sleep over it. She holds the baby near constantly and covers the apartment fridge with baby photos. Satoshi sometimes has to convince her to let him hold his daughter. Hana’s planning is a bit more streamlined now that she has her daughter in her arms. She imagines she can already see her resolve in the newborn. Spends nights imagining walking her to the academy, imagines her at the top of her class, (obviously she would be, Hana is her mother). Hana alternates between wanting to show everyone her baby and wanting to hide her away from the world. 

Her baby is three months old when Fox is needed more than Hana and she goes to hunt down a traitor. She’s a bit out of shape but nothing bad, the healers work hard to speed up a kunoichi’s recovery time after birth. She doesn’t care much about who her target is, only that they stole from the village and ran. She decides they’ll die before sunrise, after all, the baby may settle best when Satoshi holds her, but he’s terrible at getting her to take a bottle. It’s this resolve that is her undoing. In her rush to get this over with, cunning, ferocious Hana doesn’t see the explosive tags until it’s too late.


	68. Lambs Become Lions

Yamato is excited. He has an apprentice. He gets to teach her everything he knows. He just has to fix the problem of her fixation on the Uchiha boy. He can do that, though. Just needs to give her a good, strong dose of reality. Make her more interested in training than boys. 

First thing he’s going to focus on is the dieting problem. Apparently she and Inoichi’s girl are doing it. Problem is, Ino is from a shinobi clan. Her parents know the type of dietary needs a growing Kunoichi needs. Which means Ino’s diet is still much, much better than his student’s. Civilian parents don’t realize how much more a shinobi, especially a growing one, needs to eat. So he has to put a stop to that. Probably beg the Akimichi clan for a meal plan for his little apprentice. 

Once she’s actually got the energy for it, he’s going to work on her stamina. A shinobi can’t get tired after an hour of light training. He’ll have to work her into the ground to fix that. Can’t have her dying on a mission because she got tired. 

He’s going to have her build up her chakra reserves too. The mokuton takes a lot of chakra. If she wants to master it, she’ll need to expand her reserves as far as they’ll go. She has prodigious chakra control. Yamato is pleased to find that she doesn’t waste a single drop of chakra. That should make training easier. She’ll be able to make more advanced techniques work solely because she won’t put any chakra more than absolutely necessary into a jutsu. 

She’s smart too. Thank The Sage for that. Once the fan girl mentality is properly extinguished, Yamato is confident she’ll be able to learn whatever he teaches her quickly enough. She needs that intelligence to make to mokuton work with her chakra reserves anyway. He’ll need to teach her how to end a fight quickly, she’ll never be able to last in a drawn out fight using the mokuton. 

But that will all be later, right now he needs to show her just how difficult the shinobi world is. How unforgiving it can be to those who aren’t willing to bend. He looks ominously down at his little pink haired apprentice, “We have a mission.”

The look of terror on her face at his expression is possibly his favorite thing. She’ll get used to it, eventually. He already mourns that day. 


	69. Drowning in Grief

Satoshi is no stranger to funerals. He’s used to donning black funeral clothes and standing in silence as a body that was once a person is laid into the ground. Is used to the silent tears of those around him and the hollow feeling of saying goodbye to a friend for the last time. He was a child when his mother was laid to rest. He’d outlived his Sensei. Outlived his genin teammates. Outlived more comrades than he’s cared to count thanks to a war that had once seemed endless. 

Holding his wailing baby girl as Hana— fierce, brilliant, proud Hana— is laid to rest is it’s own kind of nightmare. It’s own kind of torture. Satoshi feels like his throat’s been cut. Like he’s been gutted. Like he should be in that coffin instead. It would make more sense, he thinks, if he’d died instead. He was the risktaker, after all. The reckless one. The one who jumped head first into trouble. Not Hana. Not her. He’d always figured she’d lay him to rest. That she’d outlive him by decades because she wasn’t reckless. She always thought before acting. Was always a few steps ahead. Hana should not be the one in the coffin. 

He watches without really seeing as the coffin goes in the ground. Hears without really listening as Hana’s friends, his friends, their comrades offer condolences. Satoshi thinks he says things back. He doesn’t really know though, the only thing holding him together is the child crying in his arms. He knows she’s not hungry and she doesn’t need to be changed. Maybe she’s tired, maybe she’s hot, maybe she realizes her mother is gone and is sharing the grief. He doesn’t know. Hana would know. Hana would know exactly why Katsumi is crying. Satoshi should be in that coffin instead. His daughter needs her mother more than she needs him. 

He’s not sure how they get back to the apartment. He is vaguely aware of Genma and Raidou walking with him back. Genma offering to help in anyway he can. Satoshi thinks he responds. He’s pretty sure he responds. He can figure that out later. He’s in a grief induced haze once he and his baby are in the apartment. Hana had picked the apartment. Had decorated. Had made it a home instead of just a place to sleep. This is Hana’s home, but she’s dead now and now it’s not hers. She should be the one holding Katsumi. She should be the one standing in the middle of an apartment that feels far too big suddenly. 

He tries a bottle. Tries to get Katsumi to take it. She hates the bottle. Hana had been working to make the switch from breastfeeding to bottles so she could go back on Active duty and Katsumi has been hating it. Satoshi changes her diaper, it’s clean but he does it anyway and she keeps crying. He rocks her and she cries. He lays her down to sleep and still she cries. He has no idea what’s wrong and he wants to cry with her. Hana would know what to do. 

Satoshi isn’t sure how it happens, but he ends up with a line of empty sake bottles beside him and a full one in his hand while he sits against the living room wall on the floor. His daughter is still crying in her crib and he’s crying too and he’s begging her to stop. Begging her to just stop crying. He’s apologizing to his daughter over and over that her mother isn’t here instead. Telling her in a broken, anguished voice how much he wishes it was him instead. Katsumi needs Hana. Hana was best with her. All Satoshi has ever been good for is making her giggle when she’s mad about tummy time. Satoshi can’t do this. He can’t. He barely knows how to be a _person_ , much less a father, much less a father to a motherless child. He can’t. He can’t. He _can’t._

Satoshi should have been the one in need of a funeral. Not Hana. 


	70. Survival By Any Means Necessary

Rat is an old woman. That’s how she feels anyway. She’s older than nearly anyone else in ANBU, those she came in with, Fox,Wolf, and so many others, are all long dead or retired. She’s ANBU’s only field medic though, and until Mouse is up to her standards, she’s here to stay. Her comrades need her more than she wants retirement. 

She’ll fully admit, her bedside manner isn’t the nicest. It’s been a long time since she’s worried about things like that. Her comrades aren’t the type to behave in a manner that lends towards a normal medic’s bedside manner. She’s dodged more Kunai and fists than she’s cared to count when a comrade comes back too keyed up to recognize she’s trying to help them. Fast, efficient, and good is her motto for healing her patients. If that means she’s a rude medic, that’s fine. ANBU operatives have never really cared about things like that anyway. They prefer being able to use their limbs over having a nice medic. 

Nearly twenty years in ANBU and she’s seen just about every injury possible. Has lost plenty of patients she still wishes she could have saved. ANBU is a tight knit group, for all their anonymity and aggression. She doesn’t have the luxury of not knowing every single operative she couldn’t save. She may not have known names or faces until they died, but she knew them. Knew what their voices sounded like and knew how they laughed. She knew who cared about who and which operatives to never put beside each other in her hospital beds. She knew those people and each time she failed to save one, she felt like a part of her went to the grave with them. 

The worst are the child operatives. The ones half the size of their adult counterparts. The ones that probably just got out of genin rank. They have no business being here. No business wearing a mask or needing her help. She’s always hated that about their culture. That children are used. ANBU, at least, generally doesn’t have many of those at a time. One or two. At a time. Dog, Cat, Weasel, Crow. Now Fox. Rat is harsh with the Kunoichi. ANBU have a habit of either babying child ANBU or being particularly harsh with them. Not out of dislike, but out of fear. No ANBU wants to carry home the corpse of a child. No ANBU wants see the few children among them die. So they’re harsh, they don’t let the too small operatives get away with even the slightest mistake. They teach their lessons with sharp voices and firm reprimands. 

Rat’s way of doing this is to scold the Kunoichi, while saying what she’s doing to repair injuries and why. Hoping something she says will stick in the girl’s head and give her a fighting chance if she’s injured out in the field with no way to get to a medic. Fox is Wolf’s child, is the legacy of the last Fox. Rat knows all that, despite so few others making the connection. She knows this girl was probably trained from a very young age for this job. 

Still, she makes sure Fox hears her and hears her well every time she ends up in her medical bay. The one thing she does for the girl, every time if she can even weakly justify it, is put her to sleep. It makes healing her easier, but it also gives the youngest member of ANBU a few hours of sleep that won’t even interrupted by pain from her injuries or nightmares of what happened in a mission. Rat likes to think she’s doing the girl a kindness there. 

Rat is quietly proud as the years pass and Fox keeps growing. Keeps living. Not every Child operative got to do that. Crow’s body was never discovered after all. She knows the girl is probably as damaged as Dog. She’d be an idiot not to think that. Still, she’s pleased to see Fox keep living and fighting. Even if Hyena’s influence has made the girl a chaotic entity in HQ. At least Fox never lets her antics cause problems for Rat’s medics. So long as that continues, Rat has no problems with how Hyena and Fox decide to deal with their stress. At least the girl made it to adulthood intact. 


	71. Too Small Shoulders, Too Heavy Burdens, And The Will To Bear Them

Ishihara Katsumi. Fox. Whatever name she’s going by, she takes up more of Tsunade’s thoughts than she’d like her to. Has since the first time she saw her file and promoted her to Chuunin. A Kiri blooded, Konoha bred, Nara raised, Hatake trained shinobi with knowledge that anyone would kill to obtain. She’s a hard one to overlook once a person has noticed her. She doesn’t shine as brightly as Naruto, or garner the same recognition as Kakashi, and her name doesn’t inspire the same expectations that Uchiha does, but she’s just as memorable as the rest of her genin team. 

Tsunade has put a lot of time and energy into the Kunoichi. More than she ever expected to. It’s paid off. A dangerous shinobi with unwavering loyalty to the village that understands exactly what being a shinobi entails with no false expectations or hopes. She’s what Danzo’s Root agents could have been if he hadn’t forgotten that a shinobi is as much a human as they are a weapon. A broken human is a broken shinobi and a broken shinobi is a broken weapon. Danzo broke his agents without a thought of how the end result would look. Without a thought to how they weren’t loyal, they were empty. Loyalty can’t exist without emotions. And Ishihara Katsumi bleeds emotions wherever she goes, however concealed the bleeding is. She cares, cares about the village and the people and the mission. Enough that she is willing to bear every heavy burden Tsunade places on her too narrow shoulders without complaint or hesitation every time it’s asked of her. All without the expectation of reward or even the weakest word of thanks. 

Tsunade felt guilty when she gave the girl the ANBU mask. She had once swore to herself she’d never send a child into the ANBU division. But the truth is, the Hokage doesn’t get the luxury of a clear conscience. Doesn’t get the luxury of being above things like that. Not unless they want to risk a shadow Hokage like Danzo being necessary. The girl has borne the burden of that painted mask well, better than many that have had to wear one. That fact doesn’t make Tsunade sleep easier at night. 

She can’t deny the results though. The girl is a priceless source of information that would be unobtainable otherwise. That alone makes Tsunade willing to live with the guilt of putting so much on the shoulders of a single person. The Kunoichi has to be strong, has to be lethal, has to be aware of the darkest parts of their world if she wants to survive it. There is no room for naïveté if Ishihara Katsumi wants to survive and keep her secrets.

Making Tanaka Yuma her unofficial bodyguard and then her official one is easy. He’s one of the best at keeping people alive and he’s got enough knowledge of how people think and feel that he can keep a close eye on her mental state. It helps that Tanaka and Ishihara get on well. That there’s a camaraderie there at the bare minimum. Ishihara Katsumi needs a strong support network, Inoichi has made that more than clear when they have their weekly meetings discussing the Kunoichi’s mental state. It’s a part of why she chose Tanaka in the first place, in the hopes the man would be a strong part of the network. Tsunade just wishes the two weren’t involved sexually. If that ends badly, she’s not sure what that will do to Ishihara’s mental state. Pack oriented shinobi can be unpredictable when it comes to a break in their pack. Ishihara has bent and twisted as much as she’s been asked since becoming a shinobi and Tsunade will be damned if she breaks because of a man. 

Now, sitting in a circle with all the other Kages at the first Summit in decades, with Fox standing between an Iwa ANBU operative and a Kiri one, she has no hesitation in declaring that her source of information is one of her most loyal shinobi for every single person in the room to hear. It’s for two reasons, to make it clear that she will not betray one of her shinobi to satisfy the other Kages and to give Ishihara Katsumi the only recognition she can. The girl— woman now, she supposes— has done everything asked of her, done more than any one person should be asked to do, and carried more weight than a single shinobi with only six years in the field should feasibly be expected to carry. Tsunade can’t do what she wants to, which is shine a spotlight on the girl and tell everyone how much she’s done, but she can say this. She can do this much and hope Ishihara knows her efforts have always been recognized by those that know of them. As Hokage, it’s all she can do to recognize her shinobi and protect her at the same time. 


	72. Information Is More Valuable Than Gold

Shikaku knew this was a possibility. They have more plans for dealing with this exact situation than he’s bothered to count. He’d cautioned against writing everything down, had argued it made the information too easily accessible, but with as much information as it was? They needed it written down or they’d have to dig through Katsumi’s head every single time they needed to go over it and Tsunade was concerned that the migraines the girl’s memories caused her in combination with the head trauma she received from Uchiha Obito, despite being healed and seemingly leaving no long term damage, would cause Katsumi to begin to have memory problems at the very least. Shikaku is a patient man, slow to anger, slow to act, but finding out Yakushi Kabuto managed to get his hands on the file detailing Katsumi’s earliest sessions with Ibiki is nearly enough to make him indulge in Uchiha level rage. 

Reincarnation had been left out of the file he’d taken, unfortunately. Shikaku would prefer that if something had to leak, the reincarnation bit would be involved, strictly because that implies she isn’t actively finding more information. It would keep her safer in the long run if it was made clear she wasn’t the human embodiment of all classified information. This is worse though. That part didn’t come out. Which means if they can’t divert attention away from her, downplay it or mitigate it in some way, she’ll always be a target, because people will assume she’s always privy to new classified information. It makes Shikaku want to drag her back to the safety of the Nara Compound and have his clansmen keep her company at all times like when she had just told him of her memories and she’d had an ANBU guard until she’d joined the organization herself. 

Shikaku knows this was always a risk. He’d known it from the moment Inoichi confirmed she wasn’t under a genjutsu. Known it from the moment Tsunade was informed of the situation. This was always a risk, there was always a chance. It’s why they spread the files out into hidden storage spaces through the village. Why they’d coded them. Why they all, if they mentioned Katsumi at all mentioned her as Fox or as The Source. That Kabuto managed to get his hands on the only one that mentioned her by name, simply because no one had noticed the mistake in that file until they’d checked over the copy of it that Lady Tsunade kept in case things were taken, it had made Ibiki fly into a rare rage and Shikaku would pity whoever was responsible for coding the files and making that mistake. What’s worse is that Kabuto has managed to take the fucking cipher for the code. And no one is able to tell them how the fuck any of this happened. None of the guards know. None of the security measures were tripped. The fact they were able to identify Yakushi Kabuto at all is a fucking miracle. Shikaku would be tearing into someone if he were in the village right now. His subordinates should be grateful he isn’t. 

Shikaku had hoped that the shadow corps would provide Katsumi the safety she needed. It had too, for years none of the enemies her memories had guaranteed she’d make had found her, had been able to figure out the source of Konoha’s information. It’d been a gamble, ANBU has a high mortality rate, the highest in all the shinobi divisions, but it’s a tight knit group that defends its members with a lethal zealousness. Especially its youngest members. Add in the inherent anonymity of the organization, and its possibly the safest place she could be, inherent mission dangers aside. It’d worked so well that no one had connected the Hellhound of Konoha with the Fox mask in the Bingo books. Now that’s gone. Burned to hell and back and Shikaku can feel his shadow twisting violently around him, something only extremely fury can incite in a Nara once they’ve learned to keep that at bay. 

Shikaku keeps his face blank as he goes over all possible damage control plans with Ibiki and Jiraiya and Lady Tsunade. It could be worst, he’ll admit that, Kabuto could have taken more of the Ishihara files. But this is still a mess. What’s worse is that Katsumi is here. at the Summit, where, arguably, there shouldn’t be a better place to have her, surrounded on all sides by some of the strongest shinobi in the world, with a rule of non-aggression in place untilthe end of the summit. But the other Kage want to know who their intel comes from. Have been pressing for it for days now and Shikaku knows as soon as word reaches them, that Katsumi will be under far too much threat than she should be. Allies or not, Katsumi is not safe and it makes Shikaku want to strangle someone. If only Kabuto had taken any other file instead of the single fucking one that managed to have a single fucking mention of Katsumi’s real name. Shikaku’s never run through plans faster in his life and he fought at the end of the second shinobi war and through out third shinobi war. This is a mess, but he’s not about to let it cause him to have to bury the girl he views as his daughter. Not now and not ever. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to see a specific scene or point of view, comment it down below and I’ll see if it’s something I can write!


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